


Through the Valley

by snafurougarou



Series: Gods and Monsters [2]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Injury, Choking, Domestic Violence, Drowning, Heavy Angst, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Lots of Hurt Little Comfort, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Murder, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Original Character Death(s), Police Brutality, Poverty, Pre-Canon, Prostitution, Psychological Trauma, Religious Content, Strangulation, Terminal Illnesses, Violence, Water
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:16:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snafurougarou/pseuds/snafurougarou
Summary: Set pre-canon. Merriell Shelton is an impoverished and ostracized young man taking care of his mother as her health declines. Shunned by his community and desperate for help, he turns to his priest as a last resort. It quickly becomes apparent he’s involved himself with a dangerous man, but with his mother’s life on the line, there is little he can do but adapt.Pre-Sledgefu but leading into Sledgefu in the next part of the series!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a DARK FIC.
> 
> ***Rape tag for a brief (a few sentences), implied non-con scene in Chapter 5***
> 
> None of the content was written lightly, but while I’ve avoided glorifying sensitive subjects to the best of my ability, if you feel you’ll be troubled by any of them, please abstain from reading this story. I have done my best to tag accordingly and specific warnings will be written for chapters with scenes related to archive warnings to ensure readers are aware of what is to come.
> 
>   
> PLEASE READ THE TAGS AND NOTES.
> 
>   
> And on that note, be aware that there will be spoilers in those chapter-specific warnings.
> 
>   [And here is the AMAZING art for this!](http://chloedeccker.tumblr.com/post/169554600708/through-the-valley-by-snafurougarou-a-the)

Sweat rolls down his temple, stings the fresh cut beneath his eye, and pools under his ragged nails when he scratches his cheek. He swipes his palm over his face and rubs the puddle off on the shoulder of his shirt. Before leaving home, it had been clean and pressed, but now the unbuttoned placket parts at his sternum and all that drenched cotton sticks to his torso in a haphazard arrangement of folds and creases. He tugs at the open collar as if it were strangling him, but it's the air - so thick he can’t get a breath that isn’t like water flooding his lungs.

He’d forgotten what this is like. Kneeling in this booth at the height of a Louisiana summer, feeling each grain of sand swell and stick at the center of the hourglass. Awaiting judgement and ready to do anything just to hear it filter through that screen into the constricted space between bloating, wooden walls. To emerge, finally, gasping and thankful for penance.

Through the brass screen, a kaleidoscope of color and movement flashes at the edges of his averted gaze. He lets his eyes flutter shut. MISTAKE floats behind their lids in glowing red smoke and obscures the words he knows from memory. He opens his mouth to urge them forward, but they’re caught in that smog.

“Merriell.” It's a spear through his chest when Father Arthur speaks his name. His eyes are forced open again, but he keeps them fixed on the rusty screws driven through the frame below the screen. Merriell rubs at the back of his neck and shivers chase rivulets of sweat down his spine. “It’s been a very long time since we’ve spoken here. What have you come to confess?”

“Ain't here to confess today, Father.” Already, the air stiffens. “I-I know it isn’t right to say - not here - but this ain't about god.” Not about this god anyway. But if money isn’t a god in its own right, there is still a marriage between those powers. It’s his last option.

The space between them echoes only unspoken tensions until Merriell clears his throat.

“I'm sure you noticed m’mère hasn't been to mass in a few months.”

Shadows and light sway on the other side of the screen. For too long, though, there nothing else. When Father Arthur does speak, his tone is passive.

“I have. She hasn’t been well for some time. I suspect that’s the reason for her absence.”

“Yeah...that’s the thing, she's still real sick… traiteuse been seeing her, coming to the house and everything, and nothin’s changed. Doctor - well, we ain’t seen him much - but he says without treatments she don't have long…” His voice wobbles at the end. He sucks air through his teeth and his muscles tighten. “We ain’t got the money for treatments or drugs...ain’t even got enough for the drugs...”

His gut twists under the pressure of this admission. It’s more shameful than if he were here for any sin. A grave offence, worthy of disdain.

As far as shit-things go, this nears the top of his list. This priest spent the last four years giving him cold, disapproving glances from the pulpit as Merriell sat beside his parents in the pews, obedient for their sake. At least once each Sunday he questions whether they would be in better standing with the community again if he just stayed home. If he’s already condemned, and there will be no saving him, then why pretend? Now It’s only  Mama's request that keeps him attending mass. Confession, though, that has been out for some time.

Still, aside from his last verbal communication with him, Father Arthur had always done what he could when Merriell came to him in distress.

“If it is her time, Merriell, then the Lord will take her.”

“No...listen. I was hopin’ you could help her.”

“How would I help her?” Even if his words ask a question, his tone is rough and unmoveable. A decided ‘no.’

Merriell struggles for a response, wringing his fingers and staring at them. On the back of his tongue, not quite ready to leap into the air between them, is a story of a nine-year-old boy wandering into this chamber, not to confess, but to beg for help for him and his mama. Arthur had taken him out of the booth and sat with him, looked at his welted face, and promised him he’d speak with Papa.

Papa stopped hitting them for a while. Arthur’s promise held truth. Maybe the soil of Merriell's heart had still been naive enough to permit the flourish of trust which moved him to confession every week after that to tell Father Arthur mundane sins and do his penance, clear his soul. As if god were truly working through the man.

If he could, he would say this, but he sucks back the soured words. Even if he showed him the marring on his face now, it would never be so easy to make the same request. Now he is a sinner of the worst kind, a perversion of nature, heinous to the sight of men, an abhorrence unto god. The scum off swamp logs is more loved than he is in this place.

He repeats the question to himself. _How would he help her?_

“You know everyone. People trust you. They would do things for ya. Maybe you can ask a doctor to help?” He works to right his voice as it pitches up. “I tried, Father, I tell ya I did. They don’t like me... They don’t like me and they won’t help her ‘cause of me. But she don’t deserve to suffer like this for something she ain’t done. Ain’t Christians supposed to help each other?”

Arthur is quiet. Time breaks into smaller fragments. Merriell swallows the thickness in his throat, fighting against the burn in his eyes as he waits for something - any response at this point.

Suddenly there are rustling and sweeping curtains, the clack and thud of solid soles on wooden floor boards, a creak of hinges as the door to the booth swings open and Merriell stares up from where he kneels to see his priest looking down on him, towering as tall and sharp as a spire. He meets cold, pale eyes and fights the instinct to cast his gaze away.

“Perhaps God’s punishment for you is that you should lose her.” The breath is knocked from Merriell's lungs. Something close to fury rages behind Arthur’s stiff expression. Merriell moves his jaw like he's been socked in the face, searching the static in his head for the right response.

“W-what?”

“Here you are,” he scoffs, “like you always are when something terrible is happening, looking for help. But you've given nothing of yourself. You reek of all the sin that hasn’t been cleared from your soul. Do you think there aren't repercussions for walking around as a wound on God, a festering pustule on his creation?”

Merriell jerks and recoils, pulling himself tight where he kneels.

“Your soul is unclean. Rotten. That you step foot in His house without repenting must anger Him greatly.” His voice ripples around them, filled with righteous contempt, and it burns Merriell as if he were truly something demonic.

He gathers himself in the insistence seeping around the fire in his mind. It keeps him from collapsing.

“She needs help. This ain't got nothing to do with any of that.” It can’t be about that. Arthur’s focus needs to be on her.

“I believe it has much to do with _that_. You’ve already said that the entire town has turned down your requests for assistance. You just spoke your understanding that it’s your own misdeeds which are responsible for how untouchable she's become to this community.”

Merriell chokes as he scrambles for a defense.

“You know Deputy Reynold was the one running his mouth...you don’t got any idea what...why are you…”

“Whatever he's done doesn't absolve you. You’re responsible for your own despair.”

Merriell searches Arthur’s face for understanding and finds nothing. He can't hide from his own sense of guilt, but there is more to the truth than that he's a sinner. Others have happily forced him into this box.

“You know ya can help. You know it. All you gotta do is ask and they’ll do anything.” His voice is too soft and it shakes despite his effort to keep it steady.

Arthur pauses at that. He eyes his face for a moment before reaching down to touch the swollen cut on his cheekbone.

“Is this from him?” Merriell doesn’t answer. Yes or no, this man or the other - It doesn’t matter.

He looks up at him and locks eyes, feels the unsteady weight of water in his own while Arthur’s are the slow crush of glaciers.

It won’t affect Arthur in any way to deny him. He might even find it more satisfactory to watch Merriell crumble. That’s what powerful people enjoy most. What’s it like to hold that much control over other people's lives?

Merriell is left to flounder on his knees while Arthur spends a minute with his thoughts.

“It’s not always fair. Some people escape the Lord’s wrath when we feel they are guilty of sin. Others suffer it despite the appearance of innocence. It’s unequal to the eye of man. But it’s all God’s doing. Your mother’s illness is in His plans.”

“Jus’ tell me what I can do.”

“Repent. Pray.”

Merriell bows his head and shifts around to sit on the stool rather than kneel. His heart twists and he strangles a noise in his throat.

He’s thought about when it finally gets bad enough, what he might have to do to stop her pain. He’s seen other’s sick with disease eating at their organs, the way they go. He won’t let her die like that. He won’t let her hurt like that.

Enough times in his life, Merriell could have acknowledged a hatred for this figure of god. He’s avoided it, kept his feelings on men because they are the cause of his troubles. But now, as the man he needs refuses to help him and lays it all on god, it’s the concept of it he hates, the way it allows an easy way out of empathy.

“Ain’t no good man who would stand by and let an innocent woman suffer like this. Acting like god has anything to do with any of it. You’re choosin’ to let her go this way.” He spits it through his teeth, as painful for him as he hopes it is for Arthur. “Ain’t fuckin’ right.”

Merriell takes in a heavy breath and drops his eyes. He lets out a rough laugh and shakes his head before looking back up at Arthur.

“What kinda fuckin’ god does this to a poor woman just to punish her son for his sins? I might be all kinds of fucked up, but that’s something else. This ain’t about _god_. This is about this town bein’ filled with hateful people who want my whole family to hurt ‘cause of me.”

They might have been able to arrange some kind of trade with a doctor for the treatment before, when this information had been contained within their family, but now everyone knows and his parents are held in disrepute because of how he is. No one wants to help people like him, and no one wants to help those who create people like him.

Arthur stares, and with his expressionless, sharp features and stiff, light hair he is like a statue. He folds his hands, one over the other, in front of him, but the movement only assures Merriell he’s appealing to stone.

“I really…” He sighs and looks down at his own discolored knuckles. He thinks again of coming to Arthur as a child. He has to pull him into his personal space, allow Arthur access to his vulnerabilities. It’s what they all want. To reach out and hold the pain that proves the worth of their pity. For Merriell, It means touching that final confession, pulling up that condemnation once more. “Ya know… when I came to you before, it was ‘cause I was scared.” He speaks barely above a whisper and flutters wet lashes at Arthur, and something indistinct passes across his face and lightens it.

“I expected that everyone else was gonna have it out for me, weren’t any question there, but I thought you’d be different. You’d always been kind to me.” It's not a lie. He doesn’t want to lie. His heart quickens its beat, pushes that familiar agitation and fear into his veins. But as exposed as he is in this moment, he’s chipping the ice off Arthur. Gotta keep going.

“Thought maybe you’d tell me this shit was gonna be okay. That maybe kissin’ other boys wasn’t a ticket straight to hell. So maybe you’re responsible for this too, no? ‘Cause you sure as shit didn’t do nothin’ to help.”

Merriell huffs and chuckles, an ugly noise that barely mimics amusement. He tries to tame the anger in his tone, tensing against the smoldering rage and frustration in his chest. He breathes. Every exhale carries the smoke of that fire out with it until he can speak again.

“I know you think I’m an abomination or somethin’. Y’all do. Don’t know why Reynold hasn’t strung me up by the neck already, I really don’t. But she didn’t make me this way. And if you let her die when you coulda helped...that makes you an abomination too, ya think?”

Arthur considers him for a long time. Too long. It feels dangerous.

Merriell’s legs cramp, and he shifts on the kneeler. As worked up and raw as he is, he could stand and shove his way out of there, but he’s trying not to give Arthur more reason than he already has to say no.

“You’re right.” Arthur settles on his response and Merriell glances up at him so fast his neck might snap. “You were just a child. Confused. You required guidance and I left you alone. For that I’m sorry.”

His anger drains, and a terrible pressure fills his ribcage and throat in its place.

“You’re not an abomination, Merriell. But your perversion and the tendencies that accompany it are blasphemous.” His tone is closer to how Merriell remembers it before all of this while retaining its harsh edge.

Arthur extends a hand to him and waits for Merriell to take hold of it. He hesitates, working out what he can of Arthur’s expression, finding nothing but his own questions in the process. He takes Arthur’s hand and is pulled from the booth.

Arthur’s eyes drift, examining as he stands before him, and he places gentle hands on Merriell’s shoulders. They slither up and rest against the sides of his neck and face. He's so close that his breath adds to the moisture on Merriell's skin. The smallest twitch of Merriell’s head causes Arthur to hold him still in a tightening vice of fingers.

“There is still time. It doesn’t have to be this way. I can cleanse your soul.” Arthur’s voice and face become revelatory.

Merriell's jaw unhinges and he shakes his head between Arthur’s palms, unable to break eye contact with the man even though he’s laid out too much of himself already. He scrambles to turn this back to Mama.

“Don’ need you to do that. I need you to help her.”

Arthur shakes his own head.

“I’ll get you her medication; that won’t be difficult. My condition being that we work together to purify you. Your faith has been tested. But all of the drugs in the world can't fight the will of God. You should want to be in His favor.”

“Ya gonna help her? Get her medication?”

“Yes.”

He releases a breath from somewhere deeper than his lungs and his entire body goes limp and trembles when that structure of anger and hopelessness rusts out from beneath him. Arthur catches him as he loses his balance and braces him with a hand at his waist and the other on her shoulder to hold him steady.

“It won’t be easy. I need you to understand that. With all you have inside of you…” He drifts off and looks him over again with cool eyes and his mouth pulled into a frown. “It’s going to take a great deal of work. But I’m willing to do this because it pains me to see you so far down this dark path. I need your understanding and your word that you’ll commit to purification.”

Merriell would bristle at that if he had the strength. Instead, he nods his acceptance. If he’s got even a shred of sense in his head, he’ll submit and find nothing to fight here. Still, being made to feel as though this part of him is evil and that he should be appreciative to be punished for it makes him want to hide if he can't start swinging.

He can get the medication and that’s all Merriell can be concerned about. Whatever religious lunacy he wants to subject him to in exchange for it is nothing to spend time thinking about.

“I want you to meet me at my home on Tuesday. Around noon. I'll have something for her then and we can begin your process.”

Merriell nods and looks up at Arthur and suppresses the painful wave of emotions slamming into him. He might cry or faint or scream or some other uncontrollable responses to what Arthur has promised.

“Thank you.” It's what he opts for instead, quiet and reverent, beholden to this man once more.

“You look like you could use some rest. Go home. I’ll see you in a couple days.” Arthur’s hands slip away and Merriell steadies himself. He follows after Arthur, who walks him to the door. The heavy hinges creak as it closes behind him once Merriell finds himself standing on the steps, blinded by the brightness of the day.

He leaves with something like hope, but there’s a uneven weight settling in his chest where relief should be.

 

:::

 

Exhausted as he is, it's preferable to take Arthur’s suggestion and go home to sleep for a few hours before heading to work. Napping won’t keep them fed though, and after he leaves church, Merriell wanders off to a different, more notorious bar than the one he’ll be serving at later.  

He probably shouldn’t turn a trick right after agreeing to whatever Arthur plans to do to break him of his inversion, but he isn’t going to make even a quarter of this haul pouring drinks later.

The guy’s name is David, but he doesn’t ask for Merriell’s. And that’s fine. He doesn’t need him to know his name to let him drive them to a shitty motel and fuck him. Cash beforehand, and David makes sure to slip it into his front pocket and press his palm against Merriell's groin in the process - feel the goods before making a commitment, Merriell is sure.

His stomach is sick as David slides the locks into place, the way it always is when he’s stuck in a room with a strange man. David’s big - bigger than him - and something about Merriell tends to conjure the worst in men.

He stares out the window at the hanging moss swinging off tree limbs. The breeze that blows through the open window is cool for the season, and he tries to focus on that when fingers start moving over him. Distantly, he wonders if they should close the curtains, and then he scoffs inwardly for even caring.

His thoughts fragment as his heart bursts into a crazed patter when David throws him back and is suddenly on top of him. Eager hands force him back against the wall and unbutton his shirt with reckless twisting motions. He rips it off him and captures his wrists, large fingers of one hand wrapping around Merriell’s bony joints and grinding them together. He crushes Merriell’s mouth with his, and it’s only when Merriell jerks reflexively and flinches beneath him that David pulls back a little, just enough to look at him.

He gives Merriell a soft smile, and although his arms fence him in, David drops his wrists and stops touching him for a moment.

“Jumpy there, kid?” The smile falls away when Merriell doesn’t have an immediate response, dizzy with anxiety, and David pales slightly. “You’ve done this before...?”

Merriell gives a quick laugh and nods. Talking to Arthur flustered him, must have knocked loose the bricks in his wall. He doesn’t let johns see his nerves nor does he angle for soft treatment. It’s not good business. Still, David seems to come to his own conclusions after mulling over whatever new information he’s discovered, and when he moves back in, he kisses him up his throat and holds his face in sure but gentle hands as he takes him in.

“Gonna make you feel so good. Fuck the sense right out of you.” Merriell breathes hard and stares into pools of cognac so warm they could melt the cynic out of him, but this part of the act is so familiar he fights not to roll his eyes. Guy wants to assert how much of a fucking man he is, how good he’s gonna give it to him. Merriell doesn’t make any quips, just nods.

He tries to loosen up. Through deep breaths and closed eyes, he attempts to enjoy the way David's palm stretches against his throat, how his thumb runs along his artery as he kisses him. Those lips are warm and soft and his tongue laps into his mouth and Merriell swipes his own over it. David seems encouraged by it, because he pushes Merriell against wall harder and shoves his face to the side to mouth down his cheek, along his jaw.

He drags a calloused thumb over Merriell’s nipple and the shock it sends to his groin rolls his hips against David's, cocks grinding together through too many layers. A groan squeezes up his throat. It’s rare to feel good with someone paying him for the use of his body, so if he can get it and his body responds, they both win.

David tweaks his hardening nipple, teasing it until it’s stiff and aching from the faintest contact, then he leans down and licks over it while pinching the other. Merriell moans and hangs his hands on David’s wrists as he pushes against his lips.

David's free hand clamps over his mouth as he stands up straight and pushes against Merriell again, stopping any noises from leaving him. Merriell holds tighter for support.

He looks out the corner of his eye at David and breathes hard over the hand on his mouth. David presses his cheek up against Merriell’s as he drags his hand down his lips, slipping two fingers into Merriell’s mouth. “Suck.”

Merriell doesn’t hesitate. He sucks and licks around thick fingers, and the hand holding him by his throat slips down to open the buttons of his jeans.

“I want you to be quiet.” He pushes his fingers deeper into Merriell’s mouth, to the third knuckles, pressing down on his tongue. Merriell hums around them and rolls his pelvis at David, who grips him by the hip and shoves him back. Their eyes meet again. David bites at the side of Merriell’s bottom lip and tugs at it for a moment before kissing the corner of his mouth.

When he pulls his fingers out, glistening with spit, he spins Merriell around, pushing him into the wall. He pins him there with a palm between his shoulder blades, and the other hand slips down the back of his jeans, wet fingers teasing against his entrance.

As painfully hard as he is, he's tempted to abandon any ordinary conduct and urge David to tear off his pants and fuck him into the wall - another rare experience, wanting a john to fuck him. No talking, though, just his need burning behind a cage of teeth.

David pulls his hand away and yanks down Merriell’s jeans. He drops down behind him and tells him, “stay.” Merriell smirks to himself and rests his forehead against chipping paint. Palms around his thighs glide up to cup his ass and then slide around and hold him by his hips. He jumps and yelps when David bites his cheek, and David shoves him forward, trapping his cock between himself and the wall.

One hand moves to hold him there, pressed against the small of his back, the other is gone for a minute before slipping between his cheeks, wet and cool. A finger pushes into him, slicks him up a moment, and then a second joins it. David finds his prostate and rolls his fingertips against that magic spot until Merriell pants and squirms and his legs shake. He's throbbing and fighting back moans, but David continues, unfazed by clipped whines and tremors breaking the lock in Merriell's knees.

He glances back over his shoulder at David and sees him grinning up at him. Merriell slips into a haze, so ensnared in his arousal that his pleas sit on the tip of his tongue by the time David removes his fingers and stands up again.

Strong arms wrap around Merriell’s waist and hold him tight against the broad body at his back. David kisses his throat, sucking welts along his jugular. When Merriell can't stop a whine from piercing the air, David gives his neck a bite that makes him clench his jaw and struggle against the spasm in his untouched cock.

David picks Merriell up and tosses him onto the bed. A belt buckle jingles and fabric falls to the floor. Shivers run along his spine, and a moment later, David is wrenching his hips up, and Merriell rests his forehead on his arms as his cock fills him.

It’s a little too fast, and Merriell tries to keep quiet, but he groans and tenses at the sudden invasion. He sighs his relief when David gives him a minute, petting his hip as he adjusts.

He grazes him just right on each thrust, in and out, and Merriell gasps and buries a moan in the mattress. There is a pleased hum behind him and then a light slap against his ass to remind him not to make a sound as he picks up his pace.

As David slams into him, a throbbing ache of pleasure swells inside him with each thrust. He could cum with just a couple of strokes, but David hasn’t even brushed him. It’s against his own rules to interrupt a job for his own gratification, but he hasn’t been treated quite like this before, and his body is burning for release.

Before he can take himself in hand, David pulls him up onto his lap, back against David’s chest, and wraps one arm around Merriell’s arms and a fist around his cock. Merriell bucks into it and David thrusts up into him at the same time, and he can’t fight the whimper that creeps out of him. David pulls his hand off his cock, smears precum over Merriell’s lips as he presses his fingertips to them.

“I told you. Quiet, boy.” His smile is pressed to the back of Merriell’s neck.

Merriell gives an urgent nod. He licks his lips clean once David brings his fingers back down and strokes him, rolling over his head until Merriell’s shaking and teetering on the edge.

As if he knows his body well enough to sense it, David stops stroking him. His fingertips drag up and down the length of him in a small torture that forces Merriell to squirm for contact until he's panting and shaking and fighting all of the noises that are pressed down in the core of his throat.

David grabs his hip and starts fucking him again and he pounds into that spot, and Merriell’s cock twitches and leaks and his muscles tense.

“You wanna cum?” His tone is halfway between taunting and genuine. Merriell nods and writhes back against him. David’s arm holding him across his chest moves up, and he grabs Merriell by the throat as he picks up the pace of his thrusts. His hand around his throat tightens, squeezes until Merriell instinctively claws at it, starts to struggle and whine as panic ignites in his belly and shoots up into his chest.

David loosens his grip and brushes Merriell’s hair with his other hand as he shushes him.

“Easy now...It’s going to feel amazing.” Merriell shivers and sighs and can’t decide if he should trust this guy or call it all off and take the financial hit. No other john would wait for him to decide or stop to give him the chance to say no.

David waits, but not for long. Merriell barely nods. The hand squeezes his throat again, hard enough that breathing is difficult, but not enough to cut it off entirely. The fear is still there, and he still clutches at David desperately until the hand in his hair returns to stroking his cock.

David fucks him roughly and keeps a tight fist around the length of him, and Merriell’s hands at his throat stop trying to pull David’s hand away and instead his entire body starts to loosen under his lightheadedness.

He almost can’t feel himself touching the edge of orgasm until it’s rolling through him. He cums so hard David has to strangle the sound from him, holding his body still as he fucks him through it. David bursts inside him and lets out a short groan against Merriell’s ear as he loses his rhythm and goes slack.

He lowers Merriell onto the bed and takes a moment to watch him come back to himself. His face is cradled in David's hands when Merriell stares up into gentle eyes as they check him over.

“You alright?” The words are slow and silky against his ears. Merriell nods, or he thinks he does. All of his energy is gone though. It’s a few minutes before he can lift himself and feel around for something to clean himself up and find his cigarettes while David gets dressed.

David sets some more money on the nightstand and slips into his suit jacket while Merriell blows smoke out the window.

“Are you there often?” David sounds a little more like himself then - whatever that means in the context of their limited communication.

“The bar? Sure. Often enough.” His voice is weak and raspy as the words slur at their edges, his head still in its chemical fog.

David smirks at him and runs a thumb over Merriell's bottom lip. Merriell stops himself from pulling it into his mouth, cuts the thought down before he does something stupid.

“Good.” He leans in and kisses him again, and even though Merriell would normally have a comment ready about his time being up, he’s weak for it. There's extra cash on the nightstand and his mouth is soft and sweet. Merriell kisses him back and leans into the hand that strokes over his jaw and settles, only for a moment, against his neck. He wishes there were more once David pulls away.

The desire to tell him his name rolls along on his tongue. _Merriell._ Like it matters. Like it somehow makes this more than what it is if he speaks it to him.

It's the same as it always is except David's kink is his own sexual prowess. He keeps control, likes that control. Maybe, if there's a next time, that control will take on the cruelty Merriell's accustomed to.

He doesn’t need his fucking name.

“Be safe, kid.”

David shuts the door. Merriell peers out the window, angling himself to get a poor view of the parking lot. He sees the nice new car David gets into and then follows it with his eyes until it's out of sight.

He shouldn't feel like this about a john, and he isn’t sure what it is exactly or what to do with it. There hasn't ever been anyone who made him feel that good, if he really thinks about it. The warmth that moves through him for a moment makes his stomach quaver and then he swallows, reality falling back over him. David would never want him. Merriell isn't the kind of person anyone wants beyond the soiled mattresses of rundown motels.

His chest hollows.

He washes up and goes to work.

 

**:::**

 

Hours pass like water through stone. He pours drinks, clears tables, pretends to listen to men as they ramble off their drunken philosophies on life. His mind wanders to places he’s never been, but the images fizzle and fade when his mind offers up the sound of his mother’s rattling breath rather than the soft rustle of leaves, and then he’s right back behind the bar.

Mr. Larson eyes him as Merriell slides a beer to a guy on the end, and then he walks away shaking his head.

Larson pays him a fraction of what everyone else makes, but with his reputation, Merriell's lucky anyone will employ him at all. Even though Larson doesn’t like him, Merriell is willing to do the work for little more than tips. Money has a way of making everybody's ethics malleable.

The bell above the door jingles as it swings open, uniforms stepping through the threshold. Merriell swallows and tries to be unseen by making himself busy at the other end of the bar.

Deputy Reynold never misses him though. Since discovering that Merriell bartends here, it’s his favorite watering hole. Even if another bartender is on with Merriell, Reynold makes it a point to say hello if nothing else. A little poke. A reminder that Merriell is always being watched, never safe.

He takes a seat at the bar, Sheriff Hudson beside him.

Merriell steps up, eyes them, shakes out the nervous twitch from his fingers beneath the counter.

“What’ll it be?” He keeps his tone as neutral as possible, like they’re nothing to him. His pounding heart challenges how calm he can present himself, but it works well enough on the Sheriff because he hardly pays him any mind. Reynold is never so simple.

Hudson waves toward some scotch and Merriell pours it for both of them. As Reynold takes his, he makes sure to give Merriell a quick once over, looking for anything to get started on. His attention lingers on his throat, and Merriell feels the heat move out of his flesh and ice slides into his stomach.

Black eyes meet his. They lock him in and dig for secrets, exposures, anything to throw him in a cell for another night. Or worse.

Merriell breaks eye contact first, and when he turns to serve someone else, he hears Reynold mutter something to Hudson. Snickers shake the air behind him. He tries to ignore it - them - only acknowledges them long enough to refill their glasses as they drain them, and then he finds somewhere else to be for the rest of their visit. He’s grateful for Old Man Houser’s unrestrained storytelling tonight, taking advantage of his need for an audience to keep from spending too much time idle.

Mama used to tell him to obey the police. She wasn’t foolish enough to think they were up to anything good, but as long as Merriell didn’t provoke them, she’d been hopeful that they would leave him alone. Now she tells him to keep an eye out and avoid them. Demons have no ethics and the laws don’t apply to them.

Reynold and Hudson stay for about two hours, only occasionally acknowledging him after the first few drinks go down. When they’re ready to go, Reynold snaps his fingers and looks at him expectantly. Merriell shuffles back over to them.

“What do we owe ya?”

Merriell slips their tab to them. Reynold holds his gaze as Hudson reaches for some cash and tosses it down on the bar. Hudson heads for the door, but Reynold hangs back for a moment. He leans on the bar, close enough to Merriell that he can feel his hot breath on him, smell the booze. His stomach churns.

Merriell tries not to move. He can’t crack wise, but he can’t show fear either or Reynold will be more eager to come looking for him later. It goes against the way Merriell’s learned to fight any man who looks at him wrong, but a person can only take so many beatings. Better to stay still and hope the predator sniffs around and moves on.

Reynold’s eyes stop on his throat again, and Merriell fights with everything he has not to bring his hand up to conceal it. It might be welted from David’s mouth, hell, it could be bruised from how hard he was squeezing, but he hadn’t checked for marks.

Reynold looks into his eyes and smirks like something you’d see on a gator. Merriell meets his gaze, forces all expression off his face, tries hard not to shake or swallow.

“Looks like you were having some fun today, so I’m assuming you made enough to cover us, huh?” Reynold smirks when Merriell’s poker face falters and he drops his eyes. Reynold takes the cash the sheriff left and heads for the door. Merriell curses and dips into the money from David to cover the theft he'll otherwise be blamed for.

 

**:::**

 

Papa snoring in his bedroom is the first thing Merriell hears as he comes through the front door. Mama used to sleep in there with him, but Merriell had insisted she take over his own room to allow her undisturbed rest until she gets better. After several days of polite arguing, she gave in, exasperated by his nagging.

She’s asleep when Merriell pokes his head in. Avoiding the creakiest floorboards, he gets their water jug and fills her glass on the nightstand. He stares at her for a minute in the dark, listening to the rasping wheeze in her lungs on every breath, and then drifts to the living room.

The gloom over his mood lightens when he remembers that Father Arthur agreed to help him with her medication. He allows his imagination the freedom to think that soon her breaths won’t be tortured, that she’ll being able to walk without struggling, be able to speak to him for longer than moments at a time.

Merriell grimaces at the cutting screech as he settles onto the sofa. He kicks off his shoes but doesn’t bother getting undressed. Tugging a sheet over himself, he adjusts and curls up until he’s as comfortable as possible on those worn down cushions.

He closes his eyes, but they slip open over and over without ever touching the edge of sleep. Unless he drowns his organs in alcohol, he’s caught in the merciless of spin thoughts reminding him how he got to this point. His mind won’t settle. At best, it will eventually turn over into nightmares.

Worse still is waking up. As soon as sunlight hits his eyes, his stomach knots. The first conscious breath of air he drags into his lungs is weighted by iron. And then, again, alcohol is his only reprieve.

At nineteen years old, he's written off any hope for a long or healthy life.

He shuts his eyes again and runs over the end of his conversation with Arthur. He will get Mama’s medicine. And maybe he truly believes he can help Merriell overcome his desires, that he’s worthy of being saved. Despite having no interest in being cured - he can’t believe it’s a possibility anyway - it must mean something that Arthur could care that much to try, misguided as he might be.

Arthur is the only person he’d ever told about the other boy, about the kiss. It was so long ago now; he’d been young, terrified about what it meant. Even as disgusted as he'd been, as condemning as each of his words were, Arthur hadn't said anything about it to anyone. Maybe he understood that outing a kid to an entire town wouldn’t benefit anyone. Maybe he was just strict about the rules of confession. Regardless, if the man were guilty of anything, it wasn’t of breaking their confidentiality. Outside of his family and confession, no one new for a couple years. It's how Merriell knows it started with Deputy Reynold.

He’d picked him up for soliciting men outside a bar. Merriell had never trusted the man much at all, but the look on Reynold’s face when he cuffed him and threw him in the back of his car was verging on glee. Like he was already dreaming up how to use this situation to his advantage.

It had been so sudden, his drop into subhuman status, that there had been no time to work words into pleas and promises before Reynold had him pressed beneath his boot. Merriell's heart hammered in that back seat as he tried to explain himself calmly, only to have Reynold tell him he’d shut his fucking mouth if wanted to keep his teeth. And Merriell did.

After Reynold and Hudson had already taken their shots at him, his parents were brought in to deal with the issue. They'd known about him, had found out about his inclinations in the previous year, but not about this. He thought things were rough once they discovered he liked men. After that night, it became clear he hadn't known real trouble yet.

It should have ended there. Let the parents beat the devil out of him, the boy will learn. But within a week, it didn’t matter where Merriell showed his face, jeers were sent his way, curses and slurs.

He’d been cornered several times, openly threatened, taken more than his share of fists from people who made sure he knew they could get away with worse if they wanted. For a while, he’d been resigned to the idea that he’d be in his grave before he reached adulthood. He’d seen the brutalized bodies of men labeled ‘queer’; it was only a matter of time before they got him too.

But so far they hadn't put in the extra effort to off him. They let him languish, become a pariah, seemed to prefer it to simply killing him. Something goes wrong, Reynold and Hudson show up on his doorstep even if he couldn’t have had anything to do with it. He’s spent more nights in jail “just because” than anyone else in this town.

And Reynold...Reynold basks in every minute of it.

Papa won’t look at him anymore.

Mama is all he has. The only one who hasn’t abandoned him, who still sees him as a person. And he’s the only one fighting for her.

He sits up again and digs the heel of his hand into his eye. There is an unmarked bottle of dark liquid over on the kitchen table, and when he goes and takes a swig off it, it’s like swallowing fire. Hooch from a neighbor probably. It does the trick, spreads over his nerves after a few rough pulls from the lip.

He drops back onto the couch and folds into himself, loose and warm and foggy enough that his feelings drain away. Exhaustion tugs his eyes shut, and his last thought before sleep claims him is a vague curiosity about what Arthur could possibly believe will cleanse him enough to set things right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warnings for Chapter 2 at End of Chapter

Spanish moss sways on the thick limbs of oaks shading Arthur’s house from the scorch of the sun as a hot breeze swirls overhead.

It’s a nice enough house. That's what he'd say with a shrug if he were telling anyone else about it, but in truth it's a mansion compared to his own home. Two stories. No chips in the bright, white paint. Wrought iron fence forged with swooping vines of metal and fleur de lis around the sprawling porch. Green shutters open on all but one upstairs window, and that’s where his eyes travel over and over.

Merriell smokes a few feet from the steps, cigarette hanging from his lips, arms folded over his chest, scuffing his shoes in the dirt. The air sticks to his skin, and the sun burns deep beneath it, trying to peel his flesh off, but he can’t stop shivering.

A car passes the mouth of the driveway out on the main road. Another. It shouldn't sound so far away.

The front door opens and Arthur steps out onto the porch. Merriell frowns as he follows the casual lean of his spine, his smile, familiar in a way he wouldn't expect or desire after their last conversation.

He takes a long drag from his cigarette and lifts his hand to it. One more pull, then he flicks it away.

“Come in.”

Merriell quirks his mouth to blow smoke, looking Arthur up and down. There is patience in the way Arthur watches and waits for him. Merriell finds himself as some feral thing sniffing around a trap, about to walk right into it as long as Arthur avoids startling him.

Even startled, what choice does he have?

He drops his arms to his sides and takes each step on stiff, reluctant legs. His stomach fills with lead and drops to anchor him to ground, but he manages to get through the door and hear it click shut accompanied by the cold slash of metal against metal as Arthur slides the lock into place.

His knees almost buckle under the pressure in that space.

Nothing about its appearance should create that atmosphere. It's bright with the sun. Clean and neat. No piles or disorganized surfaces. On a shelf in the living room sits a carved stone oil burner diffusing something sweet, orange, and floral through the air. It's an unexpected difference from the incense at mass, something he didn't realize he'd been anticipating at all.

His inspection stops when Arthur’s hand comes down on his shoulder and his nerves spark. Even at his jumpiness, Arthur smiles.

“Coffee?”

Merriell nods, because he can’t speak and as much as he wants to get out of there quickly, his entire body is rough with jitters diverting him from learning what Arthur's plan is.

Arthur motions to the couch, but Merriell follows him into the kitchen and leans against a wall as Arthur shuffles around mugs he's already set out on the counter. Nice ceramic mugs without chips or cracks, and no sign of the tin cups Merriell uses when the clay mugs won't hold liquid anymore.

“You, uh, you were able to get the drugs?” Merriell rubs his palm over his neck.

Arthur nods as he pours them pools of steaming black liquid.

“I told you that would be the easy part.”

Merriell takes the mug from him and trails him back to the living room. The couch is soft but structured when he settles onto it, and his thoughts annoyingly offer up the idea that it wouldn’t be so bad to sleep on. He shakes his head clear and sips his coffee.

“Don’t be nervous.” Arthur’s tone is supposed to be reassuring, but Merriell can’t stop the abrupt laugh that bursts from him in one sharp breath before he’s silent again and pushing back into the couch cushions. He doesn’t speak, just drinks.

“Nothing that happens will be more than you can handle. I promise.”

“What’re you gonna do?”

“What are _we_ going to do. And you’ll see.”

Arthur's hedged anticipation of whatever secrets he's keeping churn the acid in Merriell's stomach. There are no other questions to ask aside from when they will begin. He leaves it alone and keeps his eyes in his mug.

The coffee is gone too soon, and Merriell pretends to sip at his empty cup for a while before Arthur catches on and takes it away.

He slips along behind Arthur when he waves for him to follow him upstairs, into the bedroom. Merriell stands in the room, taking it in in haste.

The high ceilings and flawless walls. Glossy hardwood floors. An armoire stands taller than him at his side, deeply stained and varnished. A leather pouch dangles off one of its handles with a rosary wrapped around its drawstring opening. The silver crucifix swings with the sudden movement in the room.

The bed in the center of the far wall almost takes up more space than Merriell’s entire bedroom. His attention pauses on it. Royalty would sleep on something like that. Maybe not royalty - someone who thinks himself close to it though.

Another door closes behind him. Another lock. It’s dark in the room from the closed shutters he'd been stuck on outside, and Merriell’s stomach swoops. He spins around and looks up at Arthur.

Arthur sets a hand on Merriell’s shoulder and points to the bed.

“Sit.” Arthur presents a soft smile when he says it, but something more flickers within his eyes. And now Merriell sees what this is.

It’s not what Merriell had been expecting as a means of purification, but he can't feign shock at these things anymore. Men are filled with terrible secrets, horrors for thoughts, and why would Arthur be any different? Suddenly all of those strange gazes during church arrange into a language he understands.

It hadn’t taken Merriell very long to grasp that just because someone claims that the way he is is wrong and disgusting doesn’t mean they aren’t harboring similar desires. He’s been called every name and slur he can think of by men who were more than willing to fuck him in an alleyway but couldn't stomach what that might mean about themselves.

Arthur can't stomach it either.

He almost smiles from the relief that washes over him. He can manage sex.

Merriell drops down onto the bed, leaning back on his elbows to watch Arthur as he picks up a wooden box from his desk. He extends it to Merriell. Merriell forces himself back up straight, frowning as a sourness bubbles up from his stomach and coats the back of his mouth. He takes the box.

He traces his fingertips along the hand-carved patterning. The stain and motif match that of the armoire, made by the same craftsman. Merriell’s instinct is to ask Arthur if he built them, but the question stays sat behind his teeth.

“Please. Have a look.”

Merriell holds the box in his lap for a moment, drums his fingers on the sides of it. He lacks even the slightest desire to see what is inside. But after his hesitation, Arthur raises an eyebrow at him, so he flicks up the brass latch and opens it. The contents freeze the blood in his veins.

The stack of photos is topped with an image of Merriell on David's lap, throat clasped behind facets of fingers while David's other hand is works between Merriell's legs, bodies exposed and captured in their indecency.

He slams the box shut and stares down at the lid, vision smudging away edges and details. His breathing turns ragged as his heart thrashes in his chest and forces the thunder of blood into his ears. He’s shivering through seizing muscles and avoiding seeing Arthur.

“I want you to see all of them, please.” Arthur’s voice is calm but stern.

Merriell’s throat and head are thick like he might cry. His grip fumbles on the smooth wood as he opens the box again, unsteady hands shuffling through the minutes of his encounter memorialized on film. By the bottom of the stack, he’s nearly panting and blinking back the burn in his eyes.

“You enjoyed him.”

Merriell glances up at him but can't speak. Arthur’s face is straight but the slight lift in his cheeks is evidence enough that he’s the one enjoying.

Reality shifts and rolls and melts into the fluid around his brain.

“Tell me what you're feeling.”

Their shared stare deepens, Arthur provoking him with his silent expectation. Merriell’s welling fury refuses to meet the charade of reason with more acting.

“This is horseshit!”

Merriell hurls the box across the room as he stands. An abrupt bang resonates as the box collides with the wall and crashes to the floor, scattering the photos around the room. The space surrounding him quakes but he manages to keep his balance. His focus is on the glint in Arthur’s eyes as he observes his outburst, poking at Merriell’s aggravation.

“You fuckers love this. Big fuckin’ game, ain’t it?”

“Merriell. Sit. Down.”

“No!” He shakes his head, everything inside him cracking and falling away. “No. This is what y’all do…” He jabs his finger at Arthur, but he’s losing his battle against the wobble in his lip and cringes at the way his words break. “You- you told me…”

“I told you I would help you, and I am.” Arthur steps away and picks up an amber bottle containing white pills. “This is the medication for your mother. I have not lied to you Merriell.”

He glares at the way Arthur uses his name, the sound of it on his tongue, the repetition, over and over like he's some misbehaved fucking child. Treating Merriell like he’s overreacting.

“Ya followed me... took pictures.” His eyes drift to an unfocused point as a ball of panic and shame and madness unravels through him. He's twitching - close to convulsions - when Arthur's hands come to rest on his arms.

“Merriell, sit.” With a firm hold, Arthur guides him back down onto the bed and stands over him.

Breath comes in piles, each dropping heavily in his lungs before he can get the last one out. The outlines of words pace around his consciousness, telling him to slow down, coaxing him as close to calm as he can go. He flicks his eyes to their source.

“Ya can't do this...”

“You can't lie to God. He knows everything you do. However, you might lie to me, and we can't make progress if you don't speak the truth. I need you to realize, right now, that I will know everything you do, just as God does.”

The air shimmers like an oil slick. He blinks to clear the glaze, but his vision stays the same.

Arthur sits beside him. Merriell drop his eyes to his own lap.

“I know. This isn’t easy for either of us, but It’s important to discuss it.” Arthur rubs a palm between his shoulders. “Did you like him?”

Merriell scoffs as he leans away. “Just a fuckin’ job.” He flinches inside at how badly he needs to preserve that short time where he believed someone wanted him to feel good. Arthur has no right to take this from him. If he shields it with indifference, maybe Arthur will shut up.

“Do you normally climax for these men? Is that the usual for ‘just a job’?”

A burn scorches across Merriell’s skin, leaving a wake of new sweat. Arthur must know it isn't usual but Merriell doesn't want to consider the source of his understanding.

“Sometimes it ain't all fucking bad, alright? Jesus.” He tries to shake away his disorientation but finds the haze over his senses thickens with his movement.

“What did you like about him?”

“I don't know…” He sounds petulant even to his own ears. It doesn’t matter. His thoughts are out of focus and he feels sick and chilled. Despite the message it sends, he wraps his arms around himself.

“You must know what you don't like from others.”

Merriell shrugs. What he doesn't like? How is he supposed to explain what it’s like to be nothing? Worthless beyond how others can use his body?

“Well, tell me about this one.”

Merriell sighs. “He was nice.”

“How so?” Arthur is relentless.

Merriell squirms inside his skin and seeks comfort from the feel of his own fingers through his curls. The light rustle of Arthur shifting closer makes Merriell’s nerves jump, firing fast and erratic in a way they hadn’t been earlier. Arthur reaches for his wrist and brings Merriell’s hand back down. He stares with expectation.

“Was a li’l on edge after I talked to you earlier that day. He was....” Merriell trails off, half distracted by the way the room seems to expand around him.

“Gentle? Kind?” Arthur offers.

Merriell can't respond. Is that all it is? Kindness? He did like being taken care of. His answer dies before it ever takes form.

“I want you to picture him.”

The words seem to spiral into the cup of his ear so slowly he can repeat the statement in his head several times, but when Merriell laughs, out of place like a hiccup, he nearly cuts Arthur off before he’s even finished saying it. It earns him a frown.

“Will a photograph help?”

Merriell his shakes his head, shakes his head, shakes his head and the air ripples. No more pictures.

“Tell me his name.”

He can’t. Arthur’s words get stuck beyond his reach. He sees them but can’t interact. Doesn’t want to. This isn't fair. It isn’t fair and his thoughts are stretching and he’s confused and he wants to go home.

Arthur sighs.

“Feel weird…” Merriell's jaw is like soft taffy stretching as he speaks. His words slip around his tongue, too slick to catch on it, and they come out slurred.

“This is the first step. Focus on what I'm saying.”

He hardly hears that response as he extends his hands out in front of him, wiggling his fingers. They trail and shimmer and feel like a swirl of silky fog and pin pricks. He lays back and grips the blanket beneath him.

“Wha’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing is wrong. This is just something to ease the process.”

His hands melt into the bed. When he looks to verify the sensation, they’re still on the blanket, but the patterns on the fabric are breathing with him. Colors growing too intense. Light sparkles.

Merriell looks up at Arthur and his face glows as if it's lit from within.

Arthur watches him for a moment, decisions forming behind a pale veil. He drops his hand to Merriell's throat, glides fingertips along the hollows. It stops, palm settling against the side of his neck while Arthur thumbs at his Adam's apple.

His heart ruptures with with a flurry of palpitations.

“Somethin’ ain’t right.” Merriell’s whine echoes as he pulls away quickly, jolted with the wild instinct of danger. He springs to his feet, chest combusting as he rushes for the door, but Arthur catches him before he can touch the lock.

“What’dyou do ta me?” It's a panicked cry as he fights against Arthur's hold on him. Arthur pushes him back into a wall. It bubbles up around Merriell and sucks him in as he scrambles to hold onto Arthur to keep from being swallowed. Arthur slips an arm around his back and a hand on his throat while shushing him.

“Please calm down.”

“Did- didjou you drug me?”

Arthur’s still making shushing noises, urging him quiet when his grip tightens until Merriell can’t breathe, fingers digging into the sides of Merriell’s neck to keep hold. Merriell claws at the hand only for a moment before he swipes at Arthur’s face. Arthur grabs one of his wrists, but Merriell manages to sink fingernails into Arthur’s jaw, flesh tearing and catching beneath them, trails of ragged, bloody skin striping the ridge of his face. When that doesn’t make Arthur release him, Merriell jams his fist up under his ribs, and Arthur huffs an agonized growl as his hands fall from Merriell and move to cradle his abdomen.

In that moment, Merriell doesn’t think - can’t think - just swings his fist into Arthur’s face as he’s doubled over and watches him stumble into his desk. Merriell spins around and clambers for the lock once more.

Arthur is on him in an instant, arms encircling Merriell and wrenching him back from the door again. Wet heat blasts against the back of his ear.

“This is part of the process you committed to. The harder you fight me, the harder this will be.” Arthur’s voice is breathy from wrangling him, but the devotion in his tone sparks another surge of fear. Merriell kicks his heel into Arthur’s shin and whips his head back into Arthur’s face when he jerks forward from the first impact. Arthur’s arms loosen and Merriell shoves him off as the space around him twirls, sending Merriell into the wall and then to the floor.

Arthur stands over him, face filled with barely concealed rage and warping into a terrible mask as blood trickles from his nose. Merriell’s joints are loose hinges, balance lost, fucked from whatever Arthur slipped into his cup, but he has to make a move.

He springs up with the assistance of Arthur grabbing and pulling at him and drives boney knuckles into cheekbone then jaw then whatever else he can strike in his frenzy.

Arthur abandons his hold on Merriell’s arms and catches his wrist on the next swing while the other hand returns to his throat and smashes the back of Merriell’s head into the edge of the armoire. It rips a cry from him and sets the world in motion again. Arthur knocks his head into the wood once again, destroying any chance at retaliation, and then that hand at his throat gets impossibly tight. The other releases Merriell’s wrist and slugs him in the temple.

The room whirls around him faster and he’s forced face-down into the mattress. He gasps for air when Arthur’s hand disappears, can’t stop the panicked whimper he breathes.

When he tries to crawl away, another fist catches him in the side of the head followed by another, hits him so hard there is no more sense of up or down, so he clutches the melting blanket to stabilize himself.

Merriell gulps in air, staring at the floral patterns blowing around on the duvet as his own senseless noises spill against it. Arthur jerks his arms behind his back. Something thick and rough like leather loops around his wrists. Somewhere behind the chaos of his senses, there is the impression of a belt. The metallic jingling following quick hand work mocks his helplessness. Merriell tugs to reclaim his limbs before Arthur finishes, but he pulls the bindings tight until they cut into his skin, and he buckles and ties it off.

Arthur’s arm snakes around his waist and tosses him onto his back. The buckle bites into his spine. Merriell hisses but gulps in air like he can hoard it for when the hand returns.

“This isn’t how I wanted to do this, Merriell, but wild as you are, I see no other way.”

“Fuck you!” His scream tapers into a pained groan.

The ceiling blinks swirls of light and drips onto him. Merriell thrashes despite his nausea, but all of his flailing and kicking doesn’t stop Arthur from straddling his thighs to hold him still. Merriell snaps his pounding head around, frantic for any way to gain leverage but finds nothing.

Arthur stares down at him for a moment as Merriell huffs and grimaces at the throb through his skull, the way it splinters every time he moves.

“Is this what you liked? ” Arthur wraps his hands around his throat and tightens until the walls of his throat fall into each other. “This isn’t gentle, is it? Do you like it now?” Merriell stares up into dark, bottomless holes for eyes and loses himself dropping into them.

“If you invite people to misuse you, your body, then you misuse yourself. You do not respect the gift He has given you.”

In the space where screams should be, there are choked off, gagging whines. His own, he suspects, but he’s sunk so far into and beyond himself that it could be anyone’s throat in the vice of those hands. And then they disappear.

Breath bursts into aching, spasming lungs. Another. Not so full. Quick and shallow and followed by several like it before his face snaps to the side, cracked on knuckles.

There is vibration in his chest and throat, but Merriell’s words are soundless and empty of meaning with the way his blood roars louder and harder than anything else. Whatever it is ignites some new righteousness in Arthur as he grips the sides of his jaw. Merriell watches thin lips round out and flow into bared teeth. He’s back to fighting for air and consciousness by the time he understands that Arthur's told him to be quiet. But it’s David’s voice that echoes in his head - _I want you to be quiet_.

Arthur forces him into the bed by his throat and swings the back of his other hand across his face. A yelp escapes, pressed and mangled and nothing like any sound a human being should make. Merriell struggles against Arthur, but the knuckles come again.

“I want you to picture him,” Arthur tells him again, calm as the first.

Thoughts won’t form beyond the thick cloud of pain and horror storming over his brain. It’s all image and sound. David’s face flashes where Arthur’s should be. His voice, the one that had been reassuring and enticing speaks in that same manner as he’s struck over and over until Merriell’s lips split open and the smell of his own blood fills his nostrils when he manages to drag in a breath.

That choking hand slackens loose enough for Merriell to get a few gasps only to have the air stolen from him again. Given, taken, over and over, alternating too frequently for it to feel like anything except dying.

Distantly, he knows Arthur's going to kill him. He’s so stupid for believing him. Naive and pathetic and too desperate for hope to trust his instincts. If he could breathe enough to laugh, Merriell wouldn’t be able to stop his hysteria.

“Look at me.” Arthur’s voice jolts him and he opens his eyes, but he flinches and tries to press back into bed when he sees David’s hand raised to him. It doesn’t matter. He hits him until the image before him shakes back to Arthur.

It's a struggle to look up, where he expects Arthur’s eyes should be enraged, and find they aren’t. Aside from his huffing and wrestling with Merriell, Arthur is entirely composed. His eyes have a gleam of curiosity in them and that shoots an icy sliver into his spine before they turn warm and brown and belong to someone else.

“Stop fighting me, Merriell. This is for your own good.” David’s breathless voice. Another strike across his jaw. Another.

Merriell’s eyes sting and his face is wet. Arthur stares down at him like he’s watching something change. Merriell tries not to see him, but when he looks away, Arthur rips at his hair and tugs until he meets his cold eyes once more.

A chain around Arthur’s neck slips out of his shirt as he leans over him and jerks Merriell’s head around. In his movement, something smacks Merriell on the cheek. Through his blurred vision, he can make out a marble of white sharpening with his sight and taking the shape of a molar rubbing up against his face. He cringes and squeezes his eyes shut. As he strangles shuddered breath, a cry bursts in his chest.

“Look. At. Me.” Merriell’s eyes snap open again. Arthur’s expression is soft and it only forces Merriell further into his dizzied confusion. He holds Merriell's face for a moment, hands melting into it, and thumbs over his torn lips, salt stinging them. Merriell breathes harder but is otherwise frozen under him.

Arthur’s focused on him, but his eyes work out some plot in silence, something between desire and reluctance, a hesitation that only turns Merriell’s stomach.

Fingers tapping against his lips gag him when Arthur forces them into his mouth and shoves them to the back of his throat. He heaves and chokes and bites down on Arthur’s fingers, but the way he’s jammed them in there stops Merriell from burying his teeth in them. Arthur takes hold of his throat again with his other hand, and beneath the crushing pressure, the burn of acid catches in his pipes.

He twists and wriggles, fighting with all that remains of his strength, but Arthur is an immovable obstruction. He holds Merriell there like that, staring into his eyes, watching him struggle for air that won’t come. It’s impossible to accept this as the end. So much of his time’s been spent thinking he’d be better off dead, but in this moment all he wants is life, a chance. His vision spins and the world goes fuzzy and light, breaking his body down and diffusing it into the space around him.  

Arthur blinks rapidly, and as though fighting himself, he tears his hand off Merriell’s throat and his fingers from his mouth.

Merriell rolls his head to the side, spewing bile over the comforter. He coughs and sucks in a single gasp before Arthur cages him in with his arms and gazes down on him. He is all Merriell knows in that moment, a harbinger of torture or mercy. Merriell tries to guard himself with a curled shoulder, but Arthur grabs him by it and shoves him flat against the bed.

Merriell closes his eyes, powerless to stop the hopeless whispered pleas he chokes out between sobs. Arthur must tell him to be quiet and to look at him several times, but he can’t. He receives a few more brain-shaking blows across the face before Arthur stops. Pressure disappears from his shoulders and he's turned onto his side as the belt is ripped from his wrists.

Arthur stands.

Merriell’s head swivels around an empty pit. He can only curl his tender body in on itself. The air is thick with blood and sweat and sick. He licks his lips, flinching from that careless movement and the iron on his tongue, but he still lifts shaking fingers to touch the swelling splits.

Blood is smeared on the inflamed and torn skin of his wrists. Scratches gouge his own hands where he must have been clawing at whatever he could reach.

He grasps for some stable thought to catch himself on, but his mind spins in place, trying to figure out what the fuck just happened to him. What is still going on in his mind.

Arthur returns, foggy in Merriell's awareness like a malicious spirit. He folds a wet cloth between his blood-stained fingers - _my blood, mine_ \- and sits beside him. Merriell swears the blood comes alive and climbs up Arthur’s arms, but he blinks and it’s gone. Merriell jerks his limbs to crawl away, muscles screaming with his sudden movement, but Arthur holds him there and looks at him with eyes too gentle for everything he's done.

“I’m sorry you had to endure that. Once you understand that this hurts more when you resist, it will all get easier. I promise.” He strokes a damp hand over Merriell’s cheek, brushing over the salty, wet splotches on his skin.

There are cracks in the parched lining of Merriell's throat that keep him from speaking. Something tells him that if he breathes too hard they will break open and leak his air away from him, so he keeps his breath steady and his voice restrained. He doesn’t know what he would say anyway.

The cloth is warm when Arthur drags it over his face, wiping away the mess of fluids smeared on him. Merriell stares ahead at nothing, at a breathing wall, at the fading leg of a nightstand breaking through the periphery.

His ragged breathing and racing heart do nothing but attract the attention of his monster. Arthur reaches over and rubs circles on his back. The act of compassion ensnares Merriell in terror as if caught in a spider's web as it wraps him in soft, suffocating silk.

“These associations are necessary. The drugs help to build them - so long as you follow my directions. Everything we do will cleanse and transform you. Already, you are something new. Try to feel it.” He’d snark back what this feels like, but his courage is dried up, and if he could speak at all, it would just be to beg him to stop touching him. “Your actions hurt God and you should soon find them as injurious and uncomfortable as he does. It is violence you do to yourself. You deserve more, and you owe Him more, Merriell.”

Arthur holds another cloth to Merriell’s face. It’s freezing and lumpy and hurts against his welts, but a small relief comes after a moment and Merriell takes it to hold for himself.

Arthur leans a little closer, bowing over him and lightly pushing back some sweaty curls that stick to his forehead. He can't keep the tremors hidden when they run like shockwaves out from his spine.

“Wanna go home.” His words come out in a childish mumble that burns his face beneath all it’s bruising.

“I'd like you to stay until the drugs have worn off. Just lie here.”

Merriell tries to sit up. He won’t stay here. Arthur stops him with a palm against his chest. Merriell pushes it away, feeling like his fingers brush through clouds rather than skin. Arthur grabs his shoulders and jerks him to a halt.

He trembles and recoils, lying back down with no more resistance, harboring the hope that if he just listens to Arthur the violence won’t return.

“Do you understand what I've told you?”

Merriell shakes his head. All he understands is the fear that travels through his cells like it's become part of them. Will he feel normal ever again? He wants to ask, but can't. Instead, he watches that solitary tooth swing like a pendulum at Arthur’s chest, billowing the space around it.

Merriell curls in on himself again. He holds his limbs close to his core and clamps his eyes shut. Colors play beneath his lids, giving him no peace from stimulation.

He breathes out a shaky sigh.

Arthur rubs his shoulder.

“It's alright. It's a lot for the first time. Try to relax and reflect. You can leave shortly.”

 _First time_.

He can’t.

 _First time_.

Arthur will kill him.

 _First time_.

What has he done?

He draws quick, shallow breaths and his entire body shudders as he breaks into sobs all over again.

Arthur makes some pitying sound and moves his hand in circles on Merriell’s back. It acts as a vortex, churning up more of the mess inside him, until there is nothing more. And then he lies there.

Time stretches infinitely and stirs his doubt of ever going home. He focuses on the more immediate hope that Arthur will leave him alone, but even once Arthur goes to his desk, Merriell is too aware of his presence. He's seeped inside of him.

Hours must pass. What light creeps in through the gaps in the shutters changes direction from when he first entered the room. A deep ache has settled into his entire body and bruises mottle his skin as far as he can see.

Rattling draws his attention up, and the only thing that can force him back to reality is the bottle of pills in front of his face.

“Twice a day. Morning and night. Understand?” Merriell nods and reaches an unsteady hand out to the bottle. He struggles to look at Arthur.

“Can I go home?” He winces at the painful stretch of his lips around the words and the wet stutter in his voice he can’t disguise. Arthur pours sympathy over his own features, but Merriell still sees amusement simmering beneath the facade.

For as long as Arthur doesn’t answer, the pit in Merriell’s stomach widens. Noxious heat rolls through him, and he’d puke but there is nothing more in his stomach to bring up. The return of lucid senses leaves him acutely aware that he’s too sore and weak to attempt another escape. Survival is entirely wrapped up in Arthur’s clemency.

“Of course.” Arthur's gaze travels around his face for a moment before refocusing on his eyes. “Give those to your mother. Say a prayer for her. And for yourself.”

Merriell hisses and whines as he sits up, muscles vibrating around his frame. Arthur puts his hands on him to help him, but Merriell scrambles away, keeping him in his sight as he rights himself.

Arthur shows him out, and Merriell all but runs from that gate of hell.

 

:::

 

Papa only acknowledges him long enough to shove him aside as he steps out of Mama's room. Merriell's bruised and feeble muscles, as well as the residual fog through his brain, send him stumbling into the wall. On any other night, Merriell would shoot him a glare, even if just at the back of his head, but he doesn’t want to be seen by Papa at all tonight. He just pushes himself upright again and ducks his head.

Merriell even mutters something like an apology for being in the way.

He hobbles into the bedroom. An oil lamp flickers light across one side of Mama’s face as she sleeps. His chest tightens at the way the flame paints features cut too deep with shadows in her eye and cheek. Somehow he fluffs up the belief that it isn’t as bad as it looks, that she’ll be fine as soon as he gets these pills into her.

He sits gingerly on the edge of the bed and lifts a hand to her hair, brushes his fingers through the long, dark curls and pushes them from her sweat-soaked forehead. The way he can feel Arthur’s fingers doing the same racks his spine with shivers and he pulls away.

He takes a pill out and sets it on the nightstand beside her glass of water.

“Mama,” he whispers and brushes his knuckles over her cheek. Her eyes move beneath their oily lids, but it takes a few failed flutters before they slide open and find his face. They grow big and round and her mouth twists in horror as her bony limbs grab for him.

“Merri! What happened?” As frail and weak as she is, she still tugs him toward her to protect him. A brush of her thumb over his lip shocks a flinch from him, and at that, her eyes wrap in tears. Merriell’s chest constricts. “Was it that God forsaken deputy again?”

“No, Mama…” His voice is sore and scraped. Her brows arch higher, a new suspicion taking root that siphons the bronze from her face. ”Just a fight, that’s all. I'm sorry.” He drops his eyes when he says it. She’ll know he’s lying and even if she doesn’t, he’ll see her disappointment in the idea that he can’t stay out of trouble more than a few days at a time. Either way, it’s just going to hurt, and he can’t take it.  
The stormy collar around his neck pulls her eyes and stops her breath, but he shushes her softly and works to keep her from jumping around too much.

“Merri…”

“I know. It ain’t nothin’ though. I’m fine, I swear.” He tugs his sleeves down over his wrists as he pulls away. She continues to paw at him as he grabs the pill and water glass from the nightstand, as if she can undo the damage if she keeps him close enough.

“Got somethin’ that’ll help you start feeling better.” He shows her the pill. “Father Arthur.” His name is ice down Merriell’s back . “He’s helping us get the medicine you need.” Merriell places the pill in her palm and she swallows it down with water held in quaking hands. His breath is hard to steady, anticipatory, as if a single dose will make her better. His vision blurs at the edges when the necessity of time and patience descend on him.

She closes her eyes as she settles back down onto the pillow and pulls his hand into hers, thumb traveling the peaks and valleys of his joints. Her fingertips inventory each line of bone, dust like feathers over his skin, and skim along the rawness at his wrists.

“You make me nervous, cher.”

“Mama-”

“You mind me, Merri.” She peers at him from beneath slits, inspects him from the distance, searching for the cracks in his facade. Then her face softens and a small smile plays over her features.

“Always my little troublemaker. Even when ya were a babe.” He smiles back and and sucks on his split bottom lip for a moment. It’s better when she wants to believe him, when she wants things to be okay.

“Used to come home to me covered in so much mud I had to get you in a bath ‘for I could even see all the bruises.” Her thumb continues to stroke over his hand, and she gives him a light tug for him to lie down, so he crawls as gently as he can up beside her and rests his head on her shoulder.

“My boy,” she sighs into his hair as soothing fingers find his curls and sink their magic into the roots. It turns his brain to cotton and make his muscles fall lax as secure arms wrap around him. He shifts to snuggle closer, hiding his wincing in her shoulder. Once he’s settled, sleep scratches and pulls at his eyes.

“Want me to read to you?” There is a teasing prod to her voice even as weak as it is. He laughs and shakes his head.

He lies there for a while, blinking away his own exhaustion, unmoving until he’s almost certain she’s fallen asleep again.

Then she speaks.

“Please be careful.”

He nods slowly as his mind travels to the bottle on the nightstand. It will only last until Sunday. Arthur has him on that leash now. He’ll give him exactly as many tablets as he’s willing to wait for another shot at Merriell.

With Arthur’s unpredictability, promising to be careful is a bigger lie than he wants to tell, but looking at her, there is no question he has to suffer the man and ignore caution. Still, to envision walking back into his house makes him woozy with dread. _You’ve exhausted your options_. He shakes his head. There has to be something else. He can’t do it. He can’t go back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Graphic Violence  
> Non-Consensual Drug Use


	3. Chapter 3

 

Merriell keeps his head down. The main strip downtown bustles with enough people that he’s self-conscious, avoiding the eyes of anyone he doesn’t have to speak to. He hadn’t seen much of it yesterday, but this morning, in the minute he’d taken to look over all the cuts and welts, he’d found the white of one eye bludgeoned crimson and his face so swollen in areas that the skin had turned a tight, glossy purple.

He’s a limping bullseye out here like this.

Comments slip out the sides of mouths passing by. Guys around his age mostly, the ones who act most affronted by his existence - other offended people will spare him a judging glance but keep to themselves. Merriell keeps walking, grappling against his impulses to spit on them or run home and hide.

Luckily the midday sun would cast their harassment in broad sight of the rest of the community, keeping him safe from physical contact. Even as unliked as he is, no one wants their own moral defects and criminal tendencies on display.

Even inside his destinations, the pharmacists and patrons alike send him expressions contorted with shock and disgust at each drugstore he visits. Every white coat wills him away before he can properly negotiate. Any hope he allowed himself this morning is burnt up and blown away like ash as each door closes behind him.

He strides into the last pharmacy in town and places the bottle of pills on the counter. He’s the only person in there aside from Dr. Parson, who eyes him over the frames of his his glasses from the stock shelves. He frowns as he ambles over, like he’s ready to tell Merriell off before he has to hear his appeal one more time.

“Can I help you with something, Merriell?”

“I need these for my Ma.” He taps the glass as he says it. “I can’t afford them, but she needs ‘em. What kinda deal can we make?” His voice rasps and cracks, raw and wounded and painful to keep steady, but he tries, aware that too much desperation will just find him compromised again.

Dr. Parson flicks his gaze over the damage on Merriell’s face before he picks up the bottle, inspects the label, and opens the cap to eye the tablets. He shakes his head and closes the bottle, setting it back down on the countertop and directing a sympathetic frown at him.

“I’m sorry. This is an expensive drug. Can’t cut any deals on it.”

Merriell drops his head and it shakes as he huffs out a lifeless chuckle. He peers back up at Dr. Parson. His simmering emotions push into his joints, forcing his hands to speak as much as he does.

“You can’t do anythin’? You can’t just fuckin’ help her out?” He shouldn't cuss, but it's out of his mouth before he has time to stop it. Parson bristles at it. Regret draws Merriell’s palm to the back of his neck and he calms himself.

“I could do some work for ya in exchange...fix things, clean, stock shelves. Can do whatever you need.” There’s the desperation he wanted to avoid.

“If I remember correctly, we’ve already had this conversation.” Their eyes are locked. Merriell holds a scream in his chest, but it works its way out in bodily vibrations.

Parson picks up the bottle and eyes it again. The act riles Merriell up, indignant that he’d say no and then continue pawing over what is his, and he swipes them out of Parson’s hand.

“Where’d you get those, anyway?”

“None o’ your fuckin’ business.”

Parson’s soft, drooping face pulls tight and its creases deepen in his brow and forehead.

“Why don’t you take that trash mouth elsewhere, huh?”

Merriell turns to leave even before the words make it out of Parson’s mouth. But he stops.

His blood simmers. He spins back around to see Parson shaking his head and turning back to what he’d been doing when Merriell came in. Merriell stalks toward him and slams his palms onto the counter, leaning over it. Parson glances back at him, a brief stretch of surprise exaggerating his features.

“You’re disgusting. Ain’t got a soul or a fuckin’ spine. Jus’ sit around on ya fuckin’ ass letting a woman die.”

Parson’s face melts from its frozen shock and takes the shape of anger.

Merriell glares at him, dares him to say something else, and when nothing comes, he hawks and spits across the counter. It lands on the floor with a wet splat. Merriell watches from beneath his lowered brows, tempted to leap the counter and knock Parson’s head into a wall.

“Bet they got special place in Hell for the likes of you.” He forces a cruel grin up through rough teeth, knows it's nothing resembling a smile by the falter of Parson's voice.

“Y-You watch your mouth, you little nancy.”

And that does it. Merriell clears the countertop and takes quick steps toward Parson, whose anger bleeds away into terror as he backs away. When Parson turns to run, Merriell grabs him by the shirt and throws him to the floor. He ignores the screaming in his own muscles and follows him down, hovering over Parson, bracketing his chest with his knees as he forces his wrists to the floor. He holds him there and glares down at him. Sweat from his forehead drips onto Parson’s glasses.

“Why the fuck are y’all like this?” he hisses. “Why?!” Parson jerks away from the yell expanding in the sliver of air between their faces. The throbbing behind Merriell’s eyes matches the pulse trying to break through the arteries of the old man’s throat. He focuses on the drumming inside Parson’s wrists and tightens his hands around them, fighting to keep from strangling the man instead.

He quakes with too much of that wild energy buzzing up through him. Mama always tells him he has to keep it under control; it only ever gets him into trouble. _Be still, Merri._ But that stillness is a smoldering ache in his muscles demanding a way out.

He wants him to hurt. All of them. He wants every one of these heartless looky-loos to crumble under the same helplessness they force on him. Make them flounder as their lives are wrung out of them.

It’s Parson’s trembling form beneath him that breaks his violent daydream. Merriell shudders and drops his hold, stumbling away half-dazed as he gets to his feet.

Parson lies there, silent and frozen with wide eyes and mouth.

Merriell tugs at a lock of his own hair and chews the thumbnail of his other hand, observing what he’s done. His head swims in a soup of guilt and horror, and Merriell tries to tell him he’s sorry, but his voice is dust and glass in his throat. He watches Dr. Parson’s panicked eyes for a moment longer before he climbs back over the counter and slams his way out the door.

He pulls for a cigarette and drops it - _fuck_ \- as he rushes away from the storefront, fast as his sore body will permit. He goes for another, successful this time, lights it, smokes it hard enough to be half way through after only a few pulls.

Any looks or jeers that come his way dissolve before they reach him. He veers off the main street, cutting into the woods, swallowed into their dark belly.

Merriell drops and crawls through dirt and dead things until he can crash back against a pine, its rough bark scratching through his t-shirt.

He’s never done anything like that. Not sober. Not to an old man or a respected member of the community. He’s never attacked anyone who hadn’t made the first threat. How could he do this? They already see him as some wild animal. Maybe he is. Maybe they’re right.

 _Parson deserved it._ Did he? _Yes._ Merriell doesn’t know anymore. He’s an old man. What kind of person attacks an old man?

Old man or not, he’s willing to let someone (hell, a couple of people if Merriell counts what’s likely for himself if he returns to Arthur) die even when he could do something to help. Does age make him exempt from judgement? He falls in line with the rest of them. Bigots and cowards - passive criminals.

Any of them could bend. Any of them could take pity on him, on Mama, and they refuse. Every doctor in town, every last one, turned him away. Like they had months ago. Every pharmacist. That's three drugstores filled with medications… and no one will help him out. They turn him into that animal.

He could rob one of them. Or all of them. He could take what they have and… and what? Reynold and Hudson would be only too happy to be able to legally keep him in a cell for however long that would be. Mama wouldn't get any of the drugs anyway.

Raw skin around his wrists peeks at him as he pushes himself to his feet and tries to shake the shock and shame out of his limbs. He kicks at leaves and paces in slow, narrow circles for a while, avoiding any further steps toward home. He can’t take seeing her right now. Can't take the reminder that he has no fucking option other than to go back to Arthur.

Could he just tell him that this _is_ more than he can handle? Arthur is committed to their arrangement. What would he do?

No. What would Merriell do. Mama needs the drugs. That’s why he’s stuck here.

He lights another cigarette. A quiet groan slips around it while swallowing down the sharpness in his throat from yelling.

It’s selfish. He’s no good for even considering backing out of his deal. It has to be worth his own suffering to stop hers. Mama would blister his ass if she ever found out he’d agreed to this insanity, but it’s the only way now. She'd do the same for him anyhow.

Still, his heart hammers whenever his mind skirts near the thought of seeing Arthur again.

 _Arthur_. The name diminishes him. For all that garbage he spouted about negative associations, the only one Merriell left with was the one that makes that name burn like acid and ice on his nerves.

He jerks his head around, as if just thinking the name will bring Arthur up behind him, and finds nothing but the miles of forest creeping at his back, and beyond that, the endless expanse of bayou. Still, he can’t shake off the burrs of Arthur’s gaze. Whether or not he’s watching him in this moment, he’s here.

He should run. Somehow gather Mama and some provisions and leave this cursed place. Go to the city. Maybe they don’t think highly of people like him in New Orleans either, but he knows If he stays here he’s dead. He won't be able to take care of her anyway.

And still what good would all of that be? Move to the city to be homeless so both of them can die destitute on the streets?

Dreams of a better survival ebb.

He ambles down to the river. After blazing through another cigarette, he tosses the butt into the water then lights another. Burns through a few more and when he goes for the pack again only to find it empty, and he drops it on the ground. His lungs are charred, and he’s doing nothing to mitigate the pain in his throat, but his fingers itch for another.

He walks in long swooping paths, stretching the journey home until his belly rumbles, physically needing despite how even the thought of food makes him sick.

Darkness settles over the trees.

Just a little farther and he’ll emerge from the woods up the road from his house. Still, his feet are heavy with protest. Time passes no differently inside that house or out, but among the trees he feels safe from it. The illusion is hard to shatter, but it does with the scuff of his shoes along the dirt road as he leaves his refuge and trudges home.

Later, Deputy Reynold stops by and Papa looks away when he drags Merriell from the house to tell him he’s lucky Dr. Parson isn’t pressing charges. Merriell, drunk and frustrated, can’t stop the scathing remarks he makes about Parson, Reynold, and everyone else in town. Reynold lets him off easy with a few well-landed swings of his club.

 

:::

 

Mama can't stomach the chicory coffee anymore, but she's cold from the rain this morning, the way it seeps through the walls of their rickety little house and into her bones. Merriell brings her a cup of tea and lets her handle it with her pills, watching for proof that there has been some improvement.

She gives him a look out the corner of her eye.

“You'll make yourself sick if you don't stop worryin’ so much.”

“Ain't worrying, Mama. Just happy to see you feelin’ better is all.”

A slow nod and tight lips process his response as her eyes flutter around his aging bruises.

“And how are you feeling, Merri?”

“Fine.” It’s not even noon and he’s been into the whiskey hard enough that it’s an honest answer. He has his immediate concern: Her. Everything else is a haze at the brink of his mind.

“Mhmm.” She frowns and raises an eyebrow but drops it.

She stares ahead at the far wall for several minutes. Sips her tea. He sits in the chair beside the bed observing her and then, as his disjointed thoughts become white space and his eyes unfocus and grow too heavy to hold open, he drops forward onto the mattress and tucks his arms in against his chest. He closes his eyes.

Fingers like sewing needles thread through his hair, and he hums and relaxes more under her touch.

“When you were just a li’l bug, you used to crawl up onto my lap an’ ask me to do this, you know that? Never had any trouble gettin’ ya to take a nap or go down for bed.”

He can hear the smile in her voice as she tells him that, the same story she tells him all the time, and he laughs against the blanket.

She massages the curve of his skull, lulling him deeper and further from reality.

“It was so much easier when you were a babe. I could wrap ya up in my arms and keep you safe.” She goes quiet. Merriell, cradle of sanctuary broken, lifts his head slowly enough that her hand slips down to his shoulder, and he takes it in his own and holds it on the bed.

“Mama, it's my turn to take care of you, keep you safe.” He smiles at her and watches her training her own expression over rippling emotions.

Her sea-storm eyes are glassy, and for a slice of a moment, Merriell hopes, with a pick in his heart, that she isn’t about to cry. She blinks and pulls her hand from his to help her other one lift the teacup to her lips. He can't tell if she actually sips it or if it's just a means to conceal the things she doesn't want to speak.

She sets the cup and saucer on the bed and takes his face in her hands, running her thumbs along his cheekbones, pausing beside a tender black and blue that Merriell can’t say for certain which man gave to him. Maybe on the mend from Arthur, maybe from Papa the other day when he accused Merriell of giving him an attitude about his drinking. Probably not from Reynold the other night - he swings that baton hard enough to break bones.

“Never see anything in creation more beautiful than your babies. Every one of ya is the most beautiful thing that ever existed. And that mama down the street knows the same about hers, and the ones in the big fancy houses know the same about theirs. We all have the most beautiful things ever placed on this earth.”

She kisses the bruise on his cheek like she would have if he were a child who’d fallen while playing. Child or not, he still believes in its healing power.

“Seeing our babies mistreated and broken, that’s a pain you don’t know, Merri. Ain’t nothing in the world hurts more than that.”

Her fingers return to his hair. He leans into it so he can turn his head away and hide his shame for inflicting that hurt on her. She guides his head back up, as if determined to see the things he won’t tell her.

“World is so afraid of beautiful things.” Her eyes flicker along his face, settling on his gaze, and he can’t help it, he casts it down. “Like the way they glow will burn it up if it don’ snuff them out.”

 

:::

 

Arthur is the snagged thread he can’t pull back into place, waving around and catching on everything, begging to be cut away, but doing so would cause everything else to unravel. Tomorrow they meet again, and he’s no closer to having found an alternative than he was a week ago.

His walk to work turns his thoughts of the man over in such confused revolutions that Merriell passes the bar and has to turn around once his brain catches up with his surroundings.

Inside it reeks like stale beer and fresh vomit, and he scans the room to find some regulars already yelling and spilling their drinks. It takes some power deep inside him not to walk back out and go home.

His shift is a dragging haze. It’s busy for a Sunday night, which helps him avoid his worries, but his body protests every minute he's there. He focuses on tips, makes extra nice with the clientele. Even the ones who wouldn’t care for him in their more sober states seem entertained when he makes some cracks at Edward, their regular who habitually stumbles around asking everyone else to get him another drink after Merriell cuts him off and starts fights when he's told to go fuck himself.

There’s more to clean up when the entire bar is out of their heads drunk, but it's easier to fanangle good money out of them like this.

Toward the end of the night, Merriell collects empty glasses from tables in the far corners of the bar. A middle-aged man with broken blood vessels in his face and yellow stains in his scraggly beard sits alone back there, following him with ogling eyes and slips his fingers around Merriell’s wrist when he reaches for a glass. Merriell jerks away, bumping into a table, sending tumblers onto their sides. One rolls off the table and smashes on the floor. The guy shakes with drunken laughter and the rotten smell of chewing tobacco wafts up at him.

He locks eyes with Merriell.

“Heard for a few bucks you’ll wrap those lips ‘round almost anything.”

Merriell straightens his back and steps around the table, putting some distance between them. He observes the guy, trying to assess if this is a sincere proposition or harassment.

The guy waggles his brow at him and waves a bill around.

“What ya say, sugar? Wanna earn an extra tip?” He grins at his own suggestion and tucks the money back into his shirt pocket.

Merriell starts to decline, his body already rejecting the idea of a cock down his throat, but that money will help. He sighs, nods his head, and takes the glasses to the sink.

Merriell snipes a handle of vodka from the stockroom. He’s going to need it for tomorrow anyway, but he guzzles a little right then to soften his revulsion.

After he shuts down, Merriell drops to his knees outside, behind the bar.

The guy wavers between hard and flaccid, too shitfaced to keep it up even when he takes him all the way. Merriell itches with the sense of being watched, and even though he’d have to leave without that money, he’s about ready to tell to guy to fuck off so he can get out of there.

The guy’s calloused and grease-cracked thumb comes down to smooth along Merriell's rounded lips, smearing saliva along them. He mutters something about them and groans.

Finally, he keeps an erection long enough for Merriell to get him there. He tries to be a big man then and shove his cock to the back of his throat, but Merriell’s stomach can’t handle swallowing, so he pulls back enough to catch it in his mouth and spit in the dirt.

The guy buttons his fly and tosses his payment at Merriell’s knees before taking off.

As Merriell stands and beats the dust off his jeans, he spins around, skimming the darkness. Finding it empty only makes his hairs stand on end, and he shoves the bills in his pocket and breaks into a run until he’s home and locking the front door behind him.

 

:::

 

Sunday rolls in with its inescapable appointment.

Merriell skips mass, and on the walk over to Arthur's house, he knocks back as much vodka as he can. It hits him after a few gulps, but that doesn’t stop his overzealous chugging. The only drawback he finds in floating in and out of awareness is that it makes the journey shorter.

At the door, he leans against the frame as he knocks, too inebriated to hold himself up straight. He hardly registers entering the house, and Arthur himself is more like a dream than the living nightmare Merriell knows him to be.

Arthur touches his hand and takes the bottle from him when Merriell releases it to withdraw his arm. He skirts out of Arthur’s reach and drops onto the couch, using the corner to keep himself propped up even as his body tries to drag him into darkness. Arthur forgoes sitting in his own chair and instead settles beside Merriell, regarding him with none of the amusement he made such an effort to conceal last time.

“You’re drunk.”

“Yeah.”

Arthur sighs and strokes Merriell’s cheek. It shocks his senses, makes Merriell lean back, but the hand stays until Arthur chooses to remove it. Merriell peers out from under the heavy droop of his eyelids to witness the slight sadness - _disappointment_ \- that dampens Arthur's features.

“Would you like to talk about last week?”

Merriell shakes his head and weakly attempts to wrap his arms around himself. Whatever their last meeting was, he'll never want to discuss it. He’d forget it ever happened if it wouldn’t endanger him to do so.

“You must be worried about today. But you’re rather brave, aren’t you? Coming here regardless.”

“Can’t jus’ not show up.” His words slur into a grumble.

“Are you afraid?” Merriell shrugs and does his best to glare at him, to seem annoyed instead of terrified. It's a ridiculous question for Arthur to ask. “Is that why you’re drunk?”

“Figure if I’m gonna get my ass beat again, don’t hurt to be a li’l numb, tu konprann?”

Arthur’s expression is steady, as if he didn’t hear him.

“How did you feel when you left?”

Merriell tosses his shoulders again. “Dunno.”

“Were you angry?”

“Angry?” Merriell almost laughs and shakes his head as the question runs through it, avoiding direct memories. “Guess not, at first.”

“Later? When you attacked Dr. Parson?”

“Didn’t attack him.” He did. He doesn’t know why he argues otherwise.

“He claims you had him pinned to the floor.”

“He wouldn’t listen ta me…”

“Why were you there, Merriell?”

Drunk as he is, the question still makes his breath shudder. Arthur’s fingers trace his face and stroke up and down his throat. He'd wanted to be drunk enough not to care, for fingers and fists to be oily smudges on his consciousness, but he's realizing he drank enough to be defenseless, slipping toward unconsciousness, heart storming his chest.

“Arthur…”

“Shhh,” Hands disappear from his neck to hold his face. “You thought they would change their minds-”

“I don’t know-”

“-But they didn’t. They saw you, this pitiful, beaten boy, and they still turned you away.”

Merriell closes his eyes. He’s cold suddenly. His chest is hollow and achy.

“Do you believe me yet? That God is upset? He doesn’t want them to help you, because you need to be absolved of your sins. He wants you to trust me, to do what I tell you.”

“You want me ta fuckin’ trust you…”

“You fed your mother the pills I supplied. I could have given you anything. Trust and belief allowed you the peace of mind to give them to her.”

His stomach caves at the thought of Arthur possibly giving him drugs that could harm her. His bleary vision tries to sharpen to gauge Arthur’s expression.

“Ya can do whatever you want to me...but if you…”

“I would never hurt her, Merriell.”

He doesn’t know why it calms him to hear him say it. He can’t wrap his head around still having trust for Arthur at all, and yet he’s right that he didn't even question him about what drugs were in the bottle.

Arthur strokes his fingers through his hair and the sensation is all wrong. Merriell jerks from the touch. His eyes get heavier, snapping open again in panic as he tries to sit up before he loses consciousness. Arthur catches him, and Merriell flails and fights as Arthur guides him down to lie on the couch.

“Relax. I just want you to sleep. You’ve had far too much to drink.”

“Don’t wanna fuckin’ sleep.” His heart is charged and he shoves at Arthur’s hands, but he’s already down.

“What do you want then?”

Merriell feels his head swoop and spin. The answer is go home. Why would it be anything else? Feel safe with her looking out for him. Her image bursts over his mind and he doesn’t answer Arthur’s question.

“Medicine...”

“You’ll still get it. Close your eyes for now. You’re all right.”

Merriell shakes his head weakly, vaguely aware he’s done this to himself this time as the room spins around him. The outer reaches of his mind scream at him to run, but that voice is powerless against his inebriation and the sure embrace of darkness pulls him into its senseless depths.

 

:::

 

He slips back into his mind and then his body, dipped in warmth too nice for the echo in the cavern of his skull telling him he isn’t safe. He pushes it away, too tired and weak and raw to engage with his anxiety right now.

He slides deeper into that comfort, eyes still closed and seeking a way back into sleep. He’s swaddled and gently rocked, the motion a distant curiosity, but he’s so eager to return to his dreamless oblivion, and the ache in his head turning sharp stops him from thinking too much. It saws through his awareness and he pulls away, back and back until all he has is the warmth surrounding him once again.

He sinks deeper still, flesh slipping along a smooth, hard surface. Heat around his neck, then his chin.

Something warm and wet slithers along the side of his face, and Merriell’s eyes slip open to find Arthur running his knuckles across his cheek.

It’s reflexive, the way he gasps and clutches the sides of the tub, pulling himself back into a rounded corner. His head rings and spins him dizzy, so he holds the sides tighter.

Arthur’s eyes play over him for a while, and Merriell is caught in the stare, too afraid to look away. He flinches when Arthur touches his hair.

“Calm down.” Arthur sits beside the tub and folds his arms on the ledge. He gazes into Merriell’s eyes.

Merriell searches for a verbal response, but disjointed thoughts throw half-shaped words at him or nothing at all. A comment about reasonable requests lay in pieces on his tongue, something like asking him to be calm isn't one, but Merriell keeps his mouth closed.

“Look at how exhausted you are.” Arthur strokes his thumb along the circles Merriell knows ring his eyes. Merriell's stomach twists at that sympathetic tone, too familiar now to produce anything but dread.

“Wha-”

“You were sick. I’ve washed and dried your clothing.”

His flush is hotter than the bath water and impossible to hide beyond the soapy foam blanketing him. Giving Arthur automatic permission to undress and handle his unconscious body is the opposite of what he’d wanted. The thought of it is beyond embarrassing; it’s more terrifying than when he's knows what is happening. He won't do this again. How stupid did he have to be to think drinking himself into a stupor was worth being entirely helpless in the possession of a man who has no reservations about drugging and pummelling him into senselessness.

“You were with another man.” It’s a sudden shift in focus. Merriell shakes his head, confused. “Last night. After you closed the bar.”

Merriell groans and locks his fingers together across his forehead.

“Fuckin’ head…”

“I’ll get you something for the pain - after you talk to me.”

Merriell rolls his eyes and winces.

“You take pictures again?”

“If I did, would you like to see them?” There’s that infuriating sublingual smile Merriell can neither see nor ignore.

“Nah. We can skip the foreplay and get to the part where you beat the shit outta me in your bathtub.” His snark is interrupted by a new spike of fear. “You drug me again?”

“You filled your body with so much poison it would have been pointless to give you anything myself.”

Merriell tries to twist away from the fingers on his face and Arthur grabs his chin.

“Don’t.” Merriell stops at Arthur’s command. “You didn't like this one. Why did you choose to engage with him?”

“Fuck, Arthur, ain’t bringin’ ‘em home to ma mère. Just need the money.”

“Is there no other way you can think to earn that?”

Merriell throws dagger from his eyes.

“With all the _other_ job opportunities I got?”

“Perhaps you aren’t being creative enough.”

“The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Arthur is quiet, watches him for too long, waiting again for something to reveal itself in him, but Merriell only finds frustration. Whatever options Arthur has thought up, he isn’t volunteering them.

Merriell shakes away from Arthur and stands up fast enough for his head to reel, but his balance holds. Water rings against the quiet as it dribbles off him and into the tub. He towers over Arthur in that instant, but Arthur’s easy stare dismisses where that’s supposed to intimidate him.

Arthur hands him a towel and Merriell whips it around his waist, eye contact unbroken.

“You mind?” Merriell raises his eyebrows and Arthur laughs as he gets up to leave. He shows the courtesy of closing the door behind him.

He doesn’t waste time. Pulls on his clothing and rinses out the taste of vomit in the sink. Good enough.

In the kitchen, Arthur hands him Mama's medication as well as some aspirin for himself. He swallows it. Apparently that’s just where the fuck he’s at with this man. Trust.

 

:::

 

Mama's voice is muffled and mingled with Papa's when Merriell gets home. He's quiet with the door to avoid letting them know he's there, pours some water into a tin cup, and goes back outside.

He sips the water. Meanders out onto the dock.

The balmy air persuades his pained body down onto the wet timber, stretching out on his back, withering dock swaying to the soft current of the bayou. He could puke again, remember it this time even, but he holds it down while his hangover claws through him. The bats zipping by overhead, chittering and feasting on mosquitoes, act as a distraction from the jolts of his false-firing nerves.

He tries not to think about Arthur’s reasons for giving him the new bottle, but he can’t stomach more alcohol and he can’t escape the automatic pull the gesture has on his curiosity.

Maybe it was leniency this time because Arthur could understand Merriell’s fear. Or maybe he just knows Merriell’s trapped so there isn’t any need to push things. One is realistic, the other is a fantasy, and neither is ideal.

He falls asleep on the dock and wakes up sometime later. Mama is still up when he heads back inside. Her face is close to a scowl, but softens when she sees him.

“There’s my boy.”

“You two fightin’?”

“No, cher. Don’t you worry about that.” She sighs. “Bring me the paper, yeah? Didn’t get a chance to read it today.”

He grabs the paper from the kitchen table and she starts flipping through it as he’s dropping into the chair.

There isn’t much to catch her attention until a few pages from the back. The image of a young man who went missing on a trip to the area with his college friends stops her fingers and tightens her expression. In the write up, the family asks for any information that could lead to his whereabouts and promises a large sum of cash as a reward for that information. Merriell snorts - his fine clothing and fashionable hairstyle stamp out any sympathy Merriell might have felt.

“They think throwin’ all their money at it is gonna get him back? Guess at least sometimes the fuckers get to feel what it’s like not ta have any power. I hope they never find-”

“Merriell!” Mama’s sharp voice cuts him down before he can finish. He shrinks back in shame under her furious eyes.

“Don’t you ever let me hear you say anythin’ like that, boy! That’s someone’s child. They doin’ what they can to get him back. Don’t you be cruel. Don’t you ever hope that pain for anyone.”

He swallows. He shouldn’t have said that. As frustrated as he is with all the money everyone else seems to have, she’s right. Those parents are suffering. She knows that suffering, has known it too many times in her life.

“I’m sorry, Mama…”

“You best be.” She keeps him pinned under her scowl. “That’s the kind of garbage I expect outta his mouth.” She nods towards Papa’s room.

Merriell recoils even further into himself.

“You think I wouldn’t give away every scrap we have if it were you? You think think those poor people feel any different?”

“No, Mama.” More scowling. Merriell looks away.

“I didn’t raise you to have a cold heart, Merri.”

“I know, Mama…” he whispers.

Mama huffs takes another second before she takes his hand in hers.

“Now get that sulk off your face.”  

He keeps his head down and flips to the next page in the paper before shrugging, folding it up, and tossing it on the floor.

“Ain’t never any good news anyhow,” he mumbles.

He picks at his fingers, mouth shut and stomach full of guilt. She finally takes pity on him and taps his hand before he tears a cuticle to the point of bleeding.

“Maybe a book instead then,” she suggests, smiling and nodding to the little collection under the bed.

“Which one?”

She considers the options for a minute.

“Somethin’ short.” A broad smile takes shape when she decides. ”To Build a Fire.”

“That one’s so dark, Mama.” It comes out as a chuckle.

“Sometimes we need a little dark to appreciate the light. At least this way it has some meaning.”  He rolls his eyes and smirks at her. “We can read a happy one after, if ya like, yeah?” She grins and pushes his shoulder. “Come on now. Read us a story, cher.”

He opens the slim anthology to her chosen chapter, eyes slipping over the the first sentences, mouth stretching and adjusting to the language shift from cajun to parisian. She settles back against her pillows to listen.

Half way through he hands it off to her. She happily takes over, and when he rests his head on the bed, her fingers comb through his hair as she reads through the rest of the story about this man’s failure to survive the Yukon wilderness, her voice flowing much more smoothly than his had.

When it’s finished, Mama says, “Always wanted to see Alaska-” Her thoughts aren’t with the dead man in the story. Neither are his. Merriell meditates on the man’s wolf dog though. He feels like that dog, forced through danger against his instincts, waiting for the people who mistreat him to provide him what he needs. And when they are gone? Well it’s just off to find more of the same. Although, he supposes, there is something to the dead man’s arrogance, his disregard for his own frailty. “-No interest in the gold, but I’d love to see all that snow and the mountains. Those Northern Lights. The endless days and nights.”

“Maybe we’ll go someday.” Merriell lifts his head as he says it. Mama breathes a weak laugh, picks up the book, and sets it aside. She turns back to him with soft eyes.

“Where do you wanna go, Merri?”

“I don’t know.” His daydreams aren’t so specific. Pick a spot on the map. Put him there. Anywhere but here.

“Hard for us to know anything, ain’t it?” She sighs. “You’ll go wherever your heart desires though. All on your own. Don’t need ya mère holdin’ you back.”

He grinds his teeth at that. She does this too much lately. Hinting around at some grand life he’s going to live once she’s no longer a worry to him. As if he has any kind of life awaiting him once she’s gone.

“Mama, that’s just about the stupidest thing I ever heard you say.”

She gasps in mock offense and smiles at him.

“Is it now?”

Merriell scoots in closer, making his face and tone as earnest as possible.

“I still need you. Always gonna need you.”

She touches his hair.

“You look so tired, Merri. Why don’t you go get some rest, huh?”

Too irritated to fight her dismissal, he just nods and stalks out of the room, dropping onto the couch to begin his battle for sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

The last stragglers amble out of the church before Merriell emerges from the trees to take light, cautious steps toward the building. His nerves urge his fingers for another cigarette as he flicks the smoked remains of this one into the dirt, but he ignores the itch.

He has avoided mass and the church itself since his first meeting with Arthur. It feels wrong to be here, like he knows too much about what it all really is. Though if you asked him, he couldn't put into words exactly what it is he knows.

All that has changed in a matter of weeks has left this place a house of dread. That this place should be a sanctuary doesn’t ease his discomfort.

But it's where Arthur wanted to meet.

He closes the doors behind him, and staring from there to the lectern and surveying the space between, he finds himself alone. Slow feet lead him up the nave, and when he reaches the other end of the church, he turns round to continue inspecting the emptiness.

Light flickers through simple stained glass windows dotting the walls. Crosses, and suns, and the vague shape of halos spilling color over glossy wooden seats. Even in the quiet there is something like a ringing that clings to each speck of dust caught drifting in that radiance.

“Merriell.” He jumps. That voice is lightning on his nerves.

Arthur shuts the door to the undercroft and approaches the lectern, wiping his hands on a rag and tucking it into his back pocket.

Quiet seconds stick between them. Arthur casts his phantom eyes over him then around him before his lips form a sad smile.

“You don’t quite fit in here anymore, do you?” It’s spoken like a passing thought, a brief observation here and then gone in the time it takes Arthur to reach him. Still, Merriell looks around, uncertain of his meaning.

“What are we doin’ here?”

Arthur runs his eyes along the empty pews.

“Your mother. She always made sure to be here for Sunday Mass. I don't believe she ever missed a week in all the years I've led this congregation. I do miss seeing her face in the crowd.” Arthur folds his hands in front of himself and gives him a solemn look. “I’m curious, Merriell, what does she say about your tendencies?”

The burn up his neck and face shouldn't come so readily. He feels no shame for this. And he believes her when she tells him he has no reason to feel ashamed. He has to. But speaking it to Arthur makes his belief disgraceful

“Says god don't make mistakes,” he mumbles. Just the sound of it leaving his mouth makes him cringe.

“Very motherly of her, indeed.”

“You think he does then? Makes mistakes?”

Arthur doesn’t doesn’t seem to hear him. Doesn’t care to anyway.

“There are things we need to address before I’m willing to continue assisting you.” _Fuck._ Merriell picks at his fingernails and tosses a cautious glance up at him where he stands, looking down on him with the sun beaming in behind his head. “I believe you might be under the assumption that your cooperation in all of this is optional. It is not.”

Is that what Merriell had thought? It’s hard to remember now. His heart batters its cage.

“You should know that you are free to end this. I have no reason to stop you. Find someone else willing to arrange for your mother’s medications if you prefer.”

Arthur’s words are a thin enamel over the truth. The permission is there but no room for preference. Hell, he doesn’t even seem to care either way if Merriell will subject himself to his abuses for her. But he cannot leave. Their meeting eyes exchange that understanding.

“I don’t want- you’re the only one.” Merriell drops his eyes and rubs the sweat from his palms off on his jeans.

“Then your payment to me is your obedience. Unless I instruct otherwise, you’re to show up sober to our meetings and there will be no more of what you pulled at our first.”

Merriell clears the argument from his throat.

Papa taught him, in the years when he would still teach him anything, never to seek help beyond himself. Not from a woman, for sure, and never from a man. Asking for help, crying, any display of need exposed your weaknesses, and they would be capitalized on - because humans are animals. And Merriell knows now that he was right. And Arthur knows all of his frailties.

He isn’t equipped with a way to disengage his desire for survival.

“I’ve allowed you your rebellion, and my patience for it has run out.”

Arthur takes Merriell’s face in cold, damp fingers and forces it up to look at him. Reflexively, Merriell clutches Arthur’s forearms, pushing against the sleeves of his shirt. Gashes peek out beneath the rolled sleeves of his button down. Their eyes dart back and forth over each other’s. Arthur searches for defiance while Merriell seeks something resembling empathy. In the end, he doesn’t find it, but he nods his acceptance anyway.

“Wonderful.” Arthur pulls his hands away and fetches a small, square tin from his trouser pocket. Merriell can't keep from staring at the angry claw marks in Arthur's flesh, even when light reflecting off the tin hits him in the eye.

“You are to take these when we meet tomorrow after you finish at the pub.”

“Tomorrow? But we're meeting today-”

“You owe me two meetings, and we must make up for that lost time.” He waits for dissent, but Merriell doesn't argue. “An hour beforehand. Let them dissolve in your mouth.” He takes Merriell's hand in his and folds the pill box into his palm, holding a light grip on him for a moment. Merriell keeps all words held down but his heart pounds like a lion is about to tear his throat out.

It's one thing to subject him to something by force and deception, but it's harder for Merriell to take this by his own hand.

“What is it?”

“Something to help open your perception.”

A groan slips from him before he can stop it. Arthur raises brow, waiting for his protest. The drugs Arthur gave him before have colored his fears of them, but he isn't allowed to say no. He pockets the box.

“It's harmless. Just don't fight it. This is about cleansing you of what you errantly desire, but it doesn't need to be as unpleasant as before - so long as you cooperate.”

Cooperate. Obey. Submit.

“This is how you prove your commitment to our work.” Arthur holds his face in his palms and sweeps his thumbs over Merriell's cheekbones. There is possession in the way Arthur handles him.

Merriell nods.  

“That's all for today.” Arthur pulls a corked bottle from his pocket. Merriell receives it without question, tucking it away in the safety off his own pocket.

“That's all?” Merriell tries to conceal the surprise in his tone.

“I can't waste anymore time on someone whose commitment I cannot trust.” He walks Merriell to the doors and opens them for him.

As Merriell steps out, he turns to speak, but Arthur cuts him off.

“Prove that I can trust you, Merriell.”

 

:::

 

His stomach sinks when he finds Papa is outside chopping wood. Coming home to the man in a sober enough state to acknowledge him is the last thing he wants after a visit with Arthur.

He swings the ax, split wood falling against the stump and into grass with a blunt thump following the powerful motion. Merriell looks away, afraid of whatever words will take the space between now and the next swing.

“Bartending or sucking?” It’s winded and lacks the usual drunken slur; instead, it carries a seething bitterness. Merriell tries not to flinch.

“Jus’ been with Father Arthur.”

“You gettin’ real chummy with him, ain’t ya?”

Merriell dares to scoff. “He don't care if you beat my ass anymore if that's what you're worried about.”

Papa considers him, breathing hard but controlled. He sets up another block of wood.

“Got that fuckin’ mouth running you into more trouble’n you can handle, boy.” Papa doesn't drop the ax or move at him, isn't interested enough in maiming him to take a swing. Merriell takes it as a sign and hurries along.

He walks passed him, into the house, the dull hacking ax starting again as he shuts the door.

He paces for a minute. The house is suffocating. There isn’t enough space for him anywhere anymore. As if all that is wrong in him has expanded, invisible to the eye, but he can feel where it presses up against the walls.

He wants. What the hell does he want?

He drops to sit at the kitchen table, head in his hands. The corner of the pill box presses into his leg, unwilling to go unacknowledged for even a moment.

Some people are happy. He doesn't believe it. Is Arthur happy? Does he go home feeling fulfilled by his day? Does he gladly revisit the feel of Merriell's throat collapsing in his hands?

His eyes scan the counter for something to drink. Nothing. And he isn't about to go digging into Papa's stash while he's so goddamn lucid.

In the end he wanders into Mama's room, unable to come up with anything else to help the chaos inside him.

She sets down her book when he opens the door and spends a minute assessing what might be entering with him. She must decide it is a lot.

“You got one troubled look on that maw.”

“You think I'm going to hell?”

Her eyes widen and fall under the furrow of her brow. It’s a pathetic moment for him, but her reassurance is the only thing that keeps him from slipping and believing the shit everyone else says about him.

“You know I don't.”

He drops his eyes and picks at his nails.

“Yeah.”

“What’s got you thinking this way?”

“I dunno. Nothin’.”

“Everybody’s got sin, you know?” Her tone strengthens, as if this is a lesson, not purely an attempt at comfort. “And knowing they have sin scares them, Merri. When people are scared, they want to point at someone else, make another person seem worse’n them, find a way to be righteous without lookin’ at themselves.”

He’s weak. He needs too much. When she waves him closer, he drops onto the bed and lets her drag him down onto her shoulder. Her words and her touch are a security he can’t decline.

“Nothin’ about you is wrong. Maybe you ain't always been the best behaved - we both know you get up to trouble like it's your heart's blood - but the thing they all damn you for is something God gave you. Maybe we can't understand it, but it ain't our place to understand Him. Ain't our place to judge.”

 _Very motherly of her._ Arthur’s conclusion taints all of it. Merriell pulls away.

He hasn't felt remorse for his inversion since the first time she told him this. He's regretted not being careful in his encounters - it wasn't fair that his decisions had condemned her for refusing to abandon him - but being attracted to men stopped being a torment in itself once she told him it wasn't god who judged him for it, it was people.

Disliking and distrusting people was nothing new to him. Those miserable bigots would find something about him to hate anyway. Money buys you freedom from the opinions of others, and he's got none of that.

“Papa looks at me like the rest of them do. Maybe worse.”

Mama breathes heavily and taps her fingers on her wrist. “Parents ain't always good people either,” she decides.

He listens to the echo of her pulse in her shoulder. Her hand comes up to his hair and strokes through it.

“Gettin’ long again.”

“He blames me for the others dyin’.” He isn't ready to dismiss this yet.

He can feel the weight in her heart at the mention of his siblings. Each one lost too early. Yet he remains.

Maybe she wouldn't love him so much if she still had others. Maybe loss obligates her to love him despite how he is. He can't tell if he's considerate or cowardly for not asking.

“He doesn't. You were just a babe. How could you be responsible?”

“Mama. You know Papa don't like me. I ain't a son to him. Just a curse wandering his house.”

A frail smile spreads over her lips as she shakes her head.

“Don't matter what that old drunk says. You're our boy.”

He wants to believe that.

 

:::

 

The next day blows in cooler than the one before it, summoning memories from a past that hardly seems like his own anymore. Sitting on the deck with Mama when she could take some time for just the two of them to enjoy a small picnic and the sounds of the Bayou.

Merriell finishes cleaning the house, skirting around Papa, who manages to come in and out several times as he gets ready to take their beaten, aluminum dinghy out on the water. Part of him makes a silent wish for him to drink too much and fall overboard, drown or get eaten by a gator. He shakes that out of his head, though. Bad luck to wish harm on another person, and he doesn’t need anymore of it. Besides, Mama would break her no-hitting rule for that thought.

The air isn’t so humid when he goes outside for a smoke, and it seems like as good a time as any to see about Mama getting some fresh air.

When he finishes his cigarette he gets lunch together. Red beans and rice and andouille from the coldbox go into a pot on the stove and he heats it. Mama might only eat a few bites, but he's overjoyed she can keep even that much down, now.

She’s looking out the window when he pokes his head into the bedroom.

“Mama.” She turns to face him.

“What are ya cookin’, cher?”

“Leftovers. Nothin’ fancy.” He strolls over to the bed and perches at the foot of it. “It’s nice out. Maybe you wanna sit on the dock with me and eat?”

“Doesn’t that sound lovely.”

She does lose her breath before reaching the side door and Merriell has to carry her to the water, but it’s a milestone to get her out of the house. She’s able to sit up, but he stays close to catch her if her strength fades.

The tremor in her hands as she handles her fork catches his eye, makes his stomach sour. It’s not right, though. Shake that off. She can hold the fork. She can feed herself. A tremor is nothing. He stops watching it and shoves a forkful of rice in his mouth. He smiles at her, brimming with happiness he hasn’t felt in...he can’t remember feeling this happy.

Mama sets her bowl aside after finishing half of the food. His eyes flit back and forth from it to her.

“How’re you feelin’?”

“Just perfect, child.” She smiles at him, but the circles around her eyes seem darker than they were when they sat down. “You just relax; I’ll tell ya if I need to go in.” It’s a teasing scold. He nods.

Her curls become black smoke each time the breeze turns into a gust. She closes her eyes and looks like she might be trying to float away on it. The bayou is quiet. His mind drifts away on it as well.

“Merri.” It breaks him from his daze. He looks at her, finding softness in her eyes. “Thank you,” the halt in her speech forces his heart into a frenzy as she tosses around what to say to him with the rolling of her eyes. “But I need to know you’ll be okay.”

“What’re you-”

“Things will be dangerous for you once I'm gone.”

“Mama-”

“Shh. Listen to me. That man out there?” She waves off at the water in the general direction Papa headed. “He ain't gonna protect you. An’ these phony Christians pretending they somehow better than you? They won't just ignore you anymore. When I'm gone, nobody is gonna have any reason to treat you nice, ya hear me?”

“They already don't treat any of us very nice...” It's half a laugh as it slips out.

“You quiet that talk. You think they're mean now, you don't know nothin’. I've seen what they do to boys like you, Merri. I-” She stops herself and frets at her lips.

Merriell's heart batters his ribs. If she's afraid, afraid and showing it, there is reason to share that fear.

“You gotta promise me you'll leave this place when I'm gone.”

“Mama, the medicine is helping, you ain't goin’ anywhere. I’m gonna stay right here.”

“Merri…” She pauses as if struck by the words she’s trying to say. “I don’t want to go either. Don’t want this to be the end. Don’t want to leave you. But I also don’t want to live long enough to see my last child die. I can’t take it. It would kill me like nothin’ else. And the longer you’re here, the more likely that one o’ these monsters is gonna do something to you. And if I gotta choose between livin’ a little longer or dyin’ so my boy can escape this hateful place…” Her eyes turn to glass. “You have to promise me, cher. Please.”

He swallows and nods and is sick to his stomach. She leans toward him and kisses his brow. The hand on his face is gentle and comforting, but he looks away when she searches his eyes and whispers, “Can't bear the thought of someone hurting you.”

 

:::

 

Merriell finishes cleaning and collects his tips from the jar on the bar top. The clock on the wall stumbles toward one in the morning - later than he'd hoped. As he heads for the door, he shoves the coins into his pocket so he can light a cigarette.

A metal edge jabs his fingertip, but when he pulls the object out, he's holding the pill box, not his lighter. He huffs and sticks the cigarette behind his ear as he flicks the lid up with his thumb.

Three white, disk-shaped tablets sit like gateways to terror in the small space.

It's begun to feel like a surreal nightmare. The way he should be able to run, but the ground is made of sand too fine to stand in, and his muscles are jelly, and right on top of him is a monster that refuses to look like anything but a man, but he knows it's a monster anyway.

Maybe he could only take one. He humors it for only a minute before dismissing the idea. Arthur will know.

He drops onto a bar stool and pops the tablets under his tongue with no more hesitation. They dissolve into goo and slide down his throat, a gagging sludge of sweet mint and something bitter and chemical.

He sits there for a while, letting his brain turn foggy with the substance. Shadows become doorways to places he doesn’t want to go. Several times he closes his eyes and has to talk himself down from panic between the chain of cigarettes that do nothing to soothe his nerves.

When he finally locks the door and leaves, he doesn’t bother looking around. His best bet to avoid confrontation is just to walk. If someone wants to start trouble with him, they’ll follow after him regardless.

The hope to be left alone is loud in the cavern of his mind. The way the air splashes around him like a lake and drips under his feet, softening the ground until it’s gummy and thick and sucking on his soles, he won’t stand a chance if he needs to run.

He’s only a few feet from the door when he’s jerked into shadow. He falls back and jumps and his limbs fill with air to propel him from his would-be attacker. His back comes up against the wall of the building, and he’s ready to swing a hollow fist at the body holding him there until a blade of light cuts through the dark and reveals the face looming over him.

“Arthur.” The spit in his mouth evaporates away from the shape of his name on his tongue.

Dark eyes assess him and pass a wordless judgement. The thin line of lips part and he whispers in a steady, definitive manner, “Follow me.”

Merriell struggles to pull a breath in as he nods. He remembers the cigarette between his fingers and lifts it to his lips. Arthur watches the shape of his mouth around the end of it. His stomach turns and Merriell takes a long drag before flicking it behind them and burying his hands in his pockets.

It isn’t a long walk to the river, where Arthur leads them down the embankment. The ground slides out from under Merriell's feet and drags him into a stumble. Arthur grabs for him when his balance fails and saves him from smashing his face into the rocks below. They settle on a boulder, treeline concealing them from the road.

A jitter worries his limbs as he waits for Arthur. He presses his fingers against his ears for minute, sensitive to the loud rush of the river beside him, and then his nerves jerk them away to put a new cigarette between his lips. Before he can light it, Arthur plucks it from his mouth and tucks it behind his own ear.

He gazes into Merriell's eyes, head ducking and shifting. Thumbs come to rest on his cheekbones as Arthur’s fingers cradle the back of Merriell’s skull and maneuver his face around.

“You've taken them.” He gives a smile too warm for the chill in Merriell's gut. “Good. Very good, Merriell. You’re doing so well.”

He lingers. His fingers, his eyes. Merriell’s heart jumps beneath Arthur’s scrutiny. The world darkens. All that exists is that pale glow of flesh and the deafening current.

Arthur holds him still and asks, “have you been with any men since we last spoke of it?”

Merriell swallows and shakes his head. He thinks he shakes his head. Did he? His stomach swoops. He’s really in it now.

“Can’t bring myself ta do it.” His voice cracks as it comes up through the desert in his throat. Arthur’s smile turns colder at his answer. He releases Merriell and it loosens his thoughts.

“‘Course, I can’t earn money like I used to ‘cause of it. And Mr. Larson,” he jabs his thumb limply in the direction of the bar, “he don’t pay me much more than dirt, and you know no one else in this town is gonna hire me. So we ain’t gonna have a home soon anyway.”

Immediately, almost without any thought at all, Arthur tells him, “I’ll take care of your lost income.”

Merriell laughs. Giggles really, skeleton and organs like jelly as the sound drums up out of him. “How can you afford to do that? Preachin’ really that good a gig?”

Arthur doesn't answer. He should never expect a response to something like that. Arthur’s secrets are as hidden as Merriell’s are exposed.

“It may come to be that life as a sinner elevates you to prophet. This shunning has left you little choice but to turn to God, and as you suffer for Him, do your penance, you will find meaning in all of this. Purpose. Your potential is so great.”

Turn to god. Merriell can’t imagine what god could be in this moment - other than Arthur himself.

There is a tickle and then pain in his arm, and Merriell looks down to find Arthur running his fingers against a large bruise on his wrist. Merriell has no way of knowing where half of the marks come from anymore.

“Interesting that the only way to be important ta god is if you bleed for him, ain’t it?”

Arthur frowns and strokes his face. It’s as if these touches are his liberties to take now.

“It won’t always be this way.”

Merriell gives him a bitter laugh. “That's what you keep tellin’ me.”

The air thins between them. Merriell doesn’t step back, but he wants to when Arthur’s breath, hot and sticky, settles on his forehead. The thickness in his throat becomes a clot when Arthur steps closer to him and his fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt, skirting along the jut of his hip bone.

Maybe Arthur no longer finds necessity in pretending this is about Merriell’s sin. Maybe knowing how gravely he needs help is just permission to indulge now. His hand is cold as it slides up his stomach and ribs. The other hand mirrors the first, pushing up under the fabric covering his skin, prompting Merriell to raise his arms so Arthur can remove it. He drops the shirt at their feet.

Merriell looks at him, pulse hammering behind his eyes, trying to find Arthur’s and also avoid them. Arthur meets his gaze, but all he finds is a hollowness that digs a pit in his stomach. Merriell drops his eyes but Arthur grabs his chin and lifts it until they are staring at each other again.

“Get undressed.”

“Arthu-”

His voice is cut off by a span of fingers over his mouth. His eyes are still locked with Merriell’s as breath and lips on his ear forces a tremor to scurry down his spine and settle cold at his core.

“You agreed to cooperate, Merriell.”

Merriell huffs and nods as the hand falls away. He gives his shoes rough kicks off his heels and unfastens his belt. His trousers, loose as they are, slip easily off his hips and to his ankles. He steps out and stands naked in front of Arthur. Arthur stops touching him for a moment and steps back to observe him.  

“I don’t understand what this is supposed to…” His frustrated tone is swallowed by Arthur’s.

“Get in the water.”

Merriell grumbles and Arthur threads his fingers into his curls and jerks his head, gripping him painfully as Merriell slips on the wet stone and grabs at Arthur to keep from falling. Merriell grimaces and looks at Arthur, but the expression he’s met with is empty. If he doesn’t cooperate, Arthur will probably beat him senseless again.

He steps into the water, hand in his hair making it harder to focus on finding his footing. The water rushes around him, pulls on him, and he holds himself against the boulder to keep from being swept away in the current.

Arthur releases his hair and points to a tiny alcove on the other side of the boulder, and Merriell swims to it. The water is colder than he expects it to be, the frigid temperature settling beneath his flesh. He finds his footing on the slippery rocks of the bed and stands so the water comes up to his sternum.

Arthur shadows over him. He makes the symbol of the cross and stares down at Merriell until he copies the motions, fingers at forehead to chest, shoulder to shoulder. Water trickles down his arms, singing against the flow of water as it rejoins it on its journey to the delta. He follows Arthur’s example and tents his hands together and then takes the extra step of humility and lowers his forehead to his fingertips. Arthur continues to look down on him.

He preaches over him in latin. Merriell doesn’t know the phrases. All he knows is that it goes on for long enough that the chill of the water seeps deeper into him and his teeth start to chatter. His muscles convulse and his fingertips go numb. Finally he breaks the prayer pose and wraps his arms around himself.

He doesn’t look up at Arthur, expects to find disapproval if he does, but Merriell is ready to jump out of the water. He’s never had a tolerance for cold.

Arthur snaps his fingers and Merriell looks up to see him kneeling down.

“Come here.” Merriell wades over to the rock supporting Arthur, and Arthur gets a hold of Merriell’s hair again and pushes him down.

Merriell allows himself to be submerged, expecting this to be the final step before he can get out and warm up. But he goes under, and then Arthur holds his head there, firm and unforgiving within the security of his grip.

Panic twists any rational thoughts from his grasp. He struggles, tugs away from him as hard as he can, but he can’t get his face up above the surface. He claws at Arthur’s hands, swings his fists at his arms, making contact a few times with no result.

It must be less than a minute when Arthur’s hands disappear and Merriell thrashes and finds his way up, breathing hard but more from his fear than from a lack of air. He scrambles out of the water and halfway up the embankment before he stops to look down at Arthur, face now painted with a gentle smile.

“Come get dressed.”

“Fuck you!”

“Mouth, Merriell.”

Merriell moves slowly, his eyes don’t leave Arthur for even a moment. When he steps back on the rock, Arthur appears wounded by the way Merriell jerks away from his touch. He puts his hands on Merriell anyway, observes his shivering, and pulls him in close against him, wrapping his arms around him.

Merriell jumps and tugs away but Arthur holds him still. He’s warm, and it’s enough to stop his fighting. He lets himself absorb some much needed heat.

“Doesn't it feel like rebirth?” Arthur murmurs the question into Merriell’s hair, but it’s so far away he may as well be talking to himself. He probably is. Hands gently rub over his shoulders, down his back, up his neck.

He allows Merriell to dress and leaves a bottle on the rock. Arthur smiles.

“I’ll see you  soon - We have work to do.”

Merriell watches him climb back up the hill and disappear over the ledge. He picks up the bottle and eyes it for a moment before dropping to sit on the rock.

He's still dizzy and delusional with the drug. Hollowed out. Like he’s lost himself to Arthur.

He doesn't want to go home. He doesn't want to go anywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNINGS AND SPOILERS IN THE END NOTES***
> 
> Please read them if you are worried about the content warnings on this fic.

Arthur nudges him forward into tentative steps, careless of Merriell’s unfamiliarity with these woods. Merriell keeps his hands extended out in front of him, grazing trees with his palms and shifting away from them as best he can without his sight. The blindfold sends him stumbling on roots and stones and Arthur catches him several times. To soften his frustration, Merriell focuses on the heaviness of their feet falling against the dirt path, sending the squirrels and chipmunks scurrying up trees to chatter at them from the safety of high branches. 

He shakes Arthur's hand off his back, irritable from this unplanned meeting with the man. The way he tracks him down unsettles him, but it’s the way Arthur seems almost excited that creeps up Merriell's spine and around his thoughts.

When they stop and Arthur pulls the fabric from his eyes, they’ve hit water. In the distance, an old church struggles to hold itself up as the earth works to reclaim it. His gut curls in on itself.

Arthur steps into the water and stands as if suspended just at its surface. A wooden plank peeks out where his foot breaks the algal bloom. It’s a silent omen, but it would be more helpful if Merriell knew why. 

Merriell follows his lead and steps onto the slick wood, skidding across it until Arthur catches him and helps him right himself, and sets Merriell to lead the way. Arthur silently observes him, determining if he’s going to slip again, as he follows him along the hidden walkway.

Off where a yard might have been once, standing up to her waist in swamp water, a statue of the Virgin prays with her eyes closed and palms open and presented to god. A supplicant.

The door to the church leans across its frame, dangling from its one remaining hinge. Glass is broken in most of the windows and completely gone in the others. The swamp swallowed up the yard and the walkway to the building long ago, and trees and greenery have replaced the foundation.

His balance sways again as the smell of decomposing matter assaults his nostrils.

Arthur nudges him again as he slows, and the dread that ripples through him causes his legs stiffen. He prefers the wet and the bugs to whatever Arthur wants to show him inside this dark and forgotten place.

On weak legs, he moves forward, battling between moving fast enough to avoid Arthur's hands and his instinctive repulsion for the crumbling building. In the end it doesn't matter. He's at the threshold and Arthur comes up against his back, slides a palm up his arm, and tells him to go in. Merriell pushes the door away enough to slip in, Arthur right behind him to slide it shut again.

Inside, light pours in through a blown-out stained glass window above the pulpit, creating a spotlight on the image before him. Merriell's knees go slack, and he stumbles and kicks up foul-smelling water, tries to turn and run away but Arthur catches him.

There is something akin to pride beaming on his features, enhanced by the sunlight. His darkened eyes sparkle, but they're empty. Merriell stares at Arthur's feet and breathes deeply, smelling swamp and must and wood rot and a decay he wants to dismiss as a dead animal somewhere nearby, but he can't.

“He’s saved now.” Those words are horror unlike anything Merriell has ever heard.

The body tied to the tall wooden stakes sticking out of the rotten floor is decomposed, but not beyond recognition. It’s that recognition that makes this worse.  _ I hope they never find him _ . That’s what he’d said, right? The missing boy. The one in the paper that had filled Merriell with such a righteous vengeance of his own. Well they won’t find him now, will they? If Mama were here she’d give him a finger wagging about the dangers of wishing harm on others... 

His stomach rolls and he starts shaking so violently that Arthur grabs him by the shoulders to steady him. Regardless, Merriell drops to his knees and heaves the contents of his stomach onto the slimy floor boards. 

And fuck, this isn’t happening, is it? How has he gotten himself here? Merriell lifts his eyes to Arthur’s, but the world around him spins and his forehead comes to rest against Arthur’s knee. He breathes in the hot, wet air, each exhale drawing more of his strength from him.

Distantly, he can hear Arthur talking still, something about drinking and gambling and sin, but all Merriell's mind will produce is the word  _ murder _ .

“I just needed you to see. I need you to know that I will save you, no matter what.”

It doesn't make sense. Dead. Rotting in the position of a kneeling crucifixion. Dead. He's never seen a body like this. Dead. The spinning in his head only quickens and forces him to clutch Arthur's pant leg just to get ahold of something stable.

“Can we go?” Merriell’s voice is so small he can barely hear himself. The question seems foolish as it comes out of his mouth. He’s never leaving this church, is he? This is where it ends for him. 

Arthur bends and digs his hands into the sweat-drenched pits of Merriell’s arms and pulls him to his feet.

“I need your assistance. Come here.” He's taking him closer to the body. Merriell digs his heels in to keep from closing the distance an inch more, strengthened by panic and revulsion.

“No, no way. Fuck this!” He turns to run, but Arthur grabs him and uses his momentum to slam his chest and shoulders into the wall, pushing his face against the softened wood. 

“Calm. Down. This is important. I need you to see this. To see him.” Arthur’s voice is calm, but he’s pressing Merriell so hard that the fibers of the rotting wall depress beneath him, molding to his palms and cheek. His huffing breaths bounce back in his face coated with spores. Small, scurrying insects crawl along and tickle his fingers. If he pushes any harder he might sink through the wood.

But even facing the wall, he can see the dead, missing boy. He's carved into the lens of each eye. 

“It’s a beautiful thing, to serve God, but painful to witness his creations become so twisted, fighting against being whole. This is my mission, Merriell. Each soul I touch will be a gleaming thing again. It will return to the creator whole and clean, bearing no sign of treachery from its journey here.”

Arthur wraps an arm around Merriell’s waist and holds him tight while his other hand combs through his curls just slightly too fast, catching tangles and ripping through them. Merriell winces against the decay.

“He was too polluted. He couldn’t be saved through ordinary means. In the end, the only way to ensure his salvation was to force it. Do you understand?”

Merriell doesn’t understand. Doesn’t want to know anything about what Arthur has done, or why, or how, just wants him to let him go. His heart slams around inside him and the arm around his waist slides up until Arthur’s palm is resting over that chaotic palpitation. 

“You’re not like him though, Merriell. I can see that you’re good. You’re working so hard. You won’t make me take such extreme measures.” The tone is so gentle it sounds loving as Arthur’s breath wets the back his neck and sends sweat rolling down his back. Merriell trembles beneath him.

Arthur holds him there a few minutes longer, speaking reassurances into his hair. It makes him sick. 

That's the justification inside of this deranged belief system he operates under. Somehow, it’s acceptable for Arthur to hurt him however he sees fit, for him to take the life of another person - all in the name of their salvation.

The weight disappears from his back, but Arthur grabs the collar of his shirt and gives it a rough tug. Merriell turns his head just a little and meets Arthur’s cold eyes from the corner of his own.

“Do not run.” It’s all warning. No hint of suggestion. If Merriell runs, Arthur will come after him. Merriell has no intention of finding out what happens when he catches him.

And then Arthur is gone. Merriell stands up straight and looks at the wall for a few more moments until there is a sickening crack and he turns around to find Arthur picking around in the boy’s mouth with a knife. Arthur pulls a tooth from his lifeless face.

“Oh god…” It’s mostly breath barely carrying the sound out of him.

“Come here.” Arthur doesn’t even look at him when he gives the command. There is a tug in Merriell’s hair, and he realizes he’s got a fist full of his own curls. His stomach whirls and flips, and his knees start to wobble again. He reaches back to support himself on the wall.

“Arthur, I can’t…”

And as if possessed by something new, Arthur turns to him, grimy knife in hand, and stares at him with eyes that look close to indifferent before flashing something dangerous.

“I have your mother’s pills. If you want them, Get. Over. Here. Now.” Merriell swallows a whine and shivers and has to fight back his body’s instinct to throw up again, but he goes to him. “Hold these.” He drops the first tooth in Merriell’s hands and its weight is almost too much to bear. He squeezes his eyes shut.

Another crack, grind, snap and a drop against his palm. Another. More. So many more. How many teeth in the human skull? Certainly not 200, but don’t try to tell him he isn’t holding thousands of dead boys’ teeth right now. 

He can’t look. 

Behind his locked eyelids, the boy watches him, bloody-mouthed and toothless. He’s going to be sick again. He swallows it down along with the pleas crawling up his throat.

Finally the sounds are gone - either Arthur has finished or Merriell has sunken so far beneath his consciousness that they don’t reach him. He opens his eyes when Arthur touches his shoulder and meets an emotionless face.

“You look unwell.”  _ Unwell? Unwell?! _ He’d scream it at Arthur if he had the kind of courage required to scream in a killer’s face, but he doesn’t. And it doesn’t matter anyway. Arthur isn’t voicing concern. His words are some kind of warning. Or promise. Or something. But not concern.

Merriell tries to hand Arthur the teeth, arm extended like a shivering branch trying to shake off its leaves. “Hold onto them until we get back to the car.”

Half-dazed, Merriell follows Arthur to the doorway, breathing quiet relief just to return to the sunlight.

Arthur re-ties the cloth around his eyes once they cross the planks back to dry land. Can’t let him know exactly where they are, Merriell absently concludes as he clutches the teeth in his hands and lets Arthur blind him once more. If he stumbles, Arthur must catch him, but Merriell burrows into the darkest spaces he can find, awareness of the world gone but for the occasional harsh grip on his arms and the jagged edges of bone in his palms.

In the car, Arthur pulls the cloth from his face and Merriell gives over the teeth. Arthur drops them into a leather pouch. The leather pouch that had been hanging in his bedroom. 

Merriell eyes the healing scratches on Arthur’s forearm as he digs around in another bag. Nausea is hot in his belly. His head lolls against the window. Arthur slides a glass bottle into his tremoring palms. He grips it tight. The rapid pounding in his chest doesn’t begin to slow until they pull onto the dirt road that heads back to town.

Thoughts won’t come to him. His mind is like fringe blown around in a storm.

Merriell fishes a cigarette from his pocket with weak and shaking hands and struggles to light it. Arthur looks at him for a moment but says nothing, allows him this small comfort. He smokes it - deep, hard breaths, burning through it too fast to feel anything but light-headed. 

He stares ahead, unable to look at Arthur. Trees blur in the corner of his vision as they drive.

_ How did he die? _ It’s the first thought he can gather up.

_ Don’t think about it. _ Thinking about it makes him woozy. Arthur doesn’t spare him another glance for a long time, and Merriell just keeps looking ahead, breathing through his mouth to air out the scream in his throat.

 

:::

 

Arthur lets him out about two miles from his house. He's never given him a ride home before, and really, Merriell would prefer the man stay as far from his house as possible, but the thought of walking makes every bone and blood cell in his body scream in protest. 

He’s walks toward home in a stupor, and the road stretches on longer than it’s ever been. His feet fall heavily, one then the other, on and on until his body isn’t real and all he is is a mind floating in the ether.

And then his stomach cramps, yanking him back into the flesh. Its gurgle eventually urges him off to the shoulder and forces up acid and nothing more.

The car that pulls up beside him startles him from his lurching and he looks up to see Deputy Reynold getting out from the driver’s seat. Merriell’s heart snaps like a rubber band. Reynold walks with his hand is on his hip, just over his gun, and Merriell watches him with flitting, watery eyes and almost breaks down before Reynold says anything.

“Merriell,” he says as he comes closer. His heart slams in his chest until his body sways with the beat and flashing, metallic speckles dance on the periphery of his vision. He starts to raise his arms before Reynold says anything else. “You been drinkin’?”

“No, Sir.” Merriell shakes his head and looks at the ground. Reynold’s boots come into his field of vision. “Just not feelin’ so good.”

“Stand up, boy.” Merriell does, keeping his hands visible. He looks up at Reynold, who chews the inside of his cheek and looks him over. “You want a ride home?”

His heart is a hammer now, shattering his ribs in its violence.

“No, thank you, sir.” It’s painful to give the man even a modicum of respect, but he can't take anything more today.

“You look like hell, boy. Might not make it on your own.” He goes to the car and opens the back door. “You just come lie down on the seat - I’ll bring you home.”

“Sir, please, I’m fine enough to walk, thank you.” His memories replay the Deputy’s baton breaking the flesh open on the back of his skull. The following blow had cracked the bone. He could have died, but instead spent ten days in intermittent periods of agony and drug-induced sleep. He suspects he’s in for worse no matter if he obeys or resists right now. But Reynold hasn’t cuffed him, which allows him a little optimism. He takes slow, hesitant steps toward the vehicle and stops a few feet from Reynold.

“I - I ain’t done anything. Ain’t causing trouble, sir.” Reynold waves him in without hearing him. Merriell can’t stop the desperate grimace that scrapes down his face. Reynold doesn’t seem to care, just keeps nodding toward the backseat, but he stops Merriell a second later.

“What’s in your pocket?” He points at the bulge in the front pocket of his jeans. 

“Medicine, sir. For m’mère.”

“Your mama’s been sick, huh?”

“Yes, sir.” He knows this.

“Heard it isn’t looking too good for her.” 

Merriell swallows, anger boiling up to meet his fear, but before he can respond, Reynold is shoving him back against the car and digging into his pocket to pull out the bottle. Merriell grabs at it instinctively, earning him a rough slam in the chest as Reynold inspects the bottle.

“You steal this, boy?”

“No, sir.” He growls through his gritted teeth. Something flashes in Reynold’s eyes when he hears the defiance in Merriell’s tone.

“Where’d you get it? I know you ain't seen no doctor today.”

Now Merriell is shaking, a mess of rage and terror and self-preservation.

“Pharmacist finally helped me out. You know? Can't afford this stuff, but she needs it. Doing me a favor.”

Reynold quirks the corner of his mouth.

“Oh yeah? What you doing for him in return for this favor?”

Merriell shakes his head, little sparks shocking his brain, sweat prickling over his skin.

“Nothing.”

Reynold laughs and pushes Merriell toward the backseat. His heart...god, his fucking heart can’t possibly beat harder or faster but it does. It swells and empties with the waves of his nausea. 

“Sir, please...I need to get home.”

“That’s where I'm taking you. You’re not in any trouble right now, I promise.” Merriell breathes roughly and watches Reynold as he crawls into the backseat. He isn’t well enough to run, so if he’s just obedient maybe it will save him from an unwarranted beating. He lies down so he can keep an eye on him from the backseat and Reynold closes the door. 

The car shakes when Reynold gets in, and Merriell expects some snarky comment to come back at him, but there is no more speaking. It’s another small relief.

They drive for a few minutes in silence, but it doesn’t last. It can’t last. Reynold, with all of his power, cannot use that power to control himself around Merriell. The temptation is too strong.

“Your mama must be proud of her boy working so hard to get her well.” He’s looking at him in the rear-view mirror, The smallest hint of a smirk in the corners of his mouth as he dangles the bait and eagerly anticipates a bite, but Merriell says nothing. “It’s a shame. She ain’t the prettiest woman I’ve ever seen, but she’s always been real sweet.” He pauses as if considering what he just said and the roughest path he can take from there. “Nice lips, though.” Merriell’s body goes hot with the flush of hatred. He wants Merriell to do something, lash out, try to hurt him. These are light pokes, but Merriell can abide them if it means he gets home to her. The pills, now in Reynold's possession, are the reminder that his pride is meaningless here. There will be time to defend her when he knows she’ll live.

“You kinda look like her. Anyone ever tell you that?” Merriell flicks his eyes up to the mirror then away quickly as his stomach drops. He closes them and breathes deeply through his nostrils. “You got her mouth. Face like a halfwit, but what a mouth. Well, I think yours sees a lot more action around town, but that pout is the same. Don’t need a pretty face to suck cock, do ya, Merriell?” Reynold smirks back at him from the mirror. Merriell goes cold. “You sure make up for all the trouble she don’t cause, huh? Always up to something, ain’t ya?” The most disturbing desire he has in this moment is wishing he were still with Arthur. “What were you doing when I picked you up?” 

Before he can speak his defence, the car slows and pulls off to the side of the road, sloping down toward the woods. Merriell sits up and crawls to the door farthest from Reynold, grabbing the handle and tugging it in futility. It’s locked to keep prisoners in. It doesn’t matter. He’s yanked from the seat in an instant and dragged to the tree line, kicking and howling and swearing and eventually begging. As he flails, his stomach sloshes and rolls, and when Reynold throws him down in the grass, he doubles over and retches again.

He hacks and gags and chokes on air. 

“Sitoplé...I didn’t do anythin’...” He gasps, working to pull in air between convulsions. He should know by now that it doesn’t matter if he’s done anything wrong when it comes to the law. All strength to fight is spent. Every time he throws up he’s weaker than before.

Reynold unzips his fly and grabs Merriell by his hair. Hope, small as it was, drains from him.

“Get to it. Sooner you do, the sooner you can get home.” Merriell looks up at him and squints at the corona of the sun behind Reynold’s head. These are the ways of men. Power and cruelty in abundance. Is this what god made in his image or is it twisted, Arthur? 

Reynold shoves him away the moment he's finished and gotten his wits about him. Merriell stumbles backward, falling on his ass, but he fights to keep his eyes on the deputy the entire time. The time he cracked Merriell over the head, the doctor's visit claimed what little savings they'd managed to hold onto. And Merriell can't assume Reynold won't beat him, not even after this. Actually, it feels very likely that if Reynold finds an opportunity, he'll be sure to knock him around a bit - the icing on his cake.

His mouth is tacky with bitterness - made worse by the hate burning down his throat. 

Reynold fastens his belt. Merriell stays vigilant as he situates his gun and baton before jingling his keys. He eyes those weapons. Briefly, he imagines what it might feel like beat Reynold bloody with his own baton.

Reynold walks up to the car, and Merriell thinks he might leave without him until he looks back and says, “Alright, get in.”

Merriell stares at him and the look on his face must betray his horror and disbelief, because Reynold laughs as he opens the back door.

“Look, I told you I'd give ya a ride home, didn’t I? Wasn't lying. Come on. Promise, straight home from here.”

Merriell gets to his feet, legs wobbling. He stalks back and forth for a moment before snapping his head toward Reynold.

“I need the pills for ma mère.”

“These?” Reynold shakes the bottle again. Exhaustion and frustration leave Merriell close to tears. He’s paid for these things twice today, and they are still out of his reach. “They working?”

Merriell doesn’t know how he should answer. He’s on the sliver of space between possibilities and could fall between them into nothing at any moment. His brain is fried beyond the ability to argue or plead and all he can do is stare at the amber bottle.

Reynold tosses it at him and he grabs for the bottle in the air, clutches it against his chest like it’s the most precious thing in the world. He holds it there, waiting for his heart to slow just a bit, just enough that he won’t topple over when he moves.

Reynold stares at him with expectation and motions toward the backseat again.  

“Rather walk, thanks.” He wouldn't. He feels too weak to keep standing, but he can't tell what Reynold's true intentions are and he needs to be as far away from this man as he can get. 

Reynold laughs and stares at him with an open-mouthed smirk. “Aw, no hard feelings, huh, Merriell? Thought you liked this kind of thing. Come on, get in.”

Merriell shakes his head, and just that makes the world spin. This is dangerous, but he won't willingly go to whatever hell this fucker is dreaming up for him next. He'll be cuffed and hauled off before he gives him anymore satisfaction.

Reynold ambles over to him, amusement beginning to fade from his face, and it's the fading that brings some relief to him. He's had what he was looking for and now this is just a test of torments until he gets bored.

“Gonna hurt my feelings, kid.” He smiles at Merriell and reaches for him, but Merriell jerks backward and bares his teeth, biting down on a snarl. Maybe finally losing interest or sensing the danger of cornering a wild animal, Reynold laughs and steps back.

“Alright, alright. But don't say I didn't offer. Here-” Reynold reaches for his billfold and hands some cash to Merriell, taunting grin still twisted across his lips. Merriell’s throat tightens. He needs any money he can get, Reynold knows that too, but Merriell doesn't take it. He stares Reynold in the eye, but he doesn’t know what this last bit of defiance is about. The damage has already been done.

Reynold moves closer again and tucks the money into the front pocket of Merriell's jeans. Merriell’s glare falters and drops to the ground.

“You behave yourself, ya hear?” He manages a strong pat on Merriell’s shoulder and drives off.

Merriell sighs, or breathes - it might just be a breath held too long - and starts down the road again.

The money in Merriell’s pocket is almost painful to carry on the walk home. Despite having done it for cash more times than he can remember, despite being hurt and spit on and cussed at after the fact, he could dismiss all of it as being unpleasantness inherent in that kind of...thing. This is different. He doesn’t know how to explain to himself why it is, but the shame eats at him furiously and feverishly, and if it weren’t five dollars in his pocket, if he didn’t need the money, he’d burn it before stepping a foot farther.

 

:::

 

Papa is asleep in the chair on the porch when he gets home, bottle of Jack cradled in the crook of his arm. He stirs at the sound of the screen door screeching open and Merriell flinches and eyes him to make sure he settles back once he’s let it shut behind him. 

Somewhere, not very far from here, there is a father who would see his son coming home pale and shaking in distress, and he’d put an arm around his son’s shoulders and ask what was bothering him. Papa, though, if he were awake, would find a reason to smack the sulk off his face. So as much as Merriell wants that other father, he wishes he didn't even have the one to begin with. Wishes he didn’t have a single man in his life at all. Monsters. All of them.

The floor creaks under his feet, sounds too loud, but he paces around, propelled by a frenzied current in his nerves. He finally has to tear through a cabinet to find something to drink, and when he does, he guzzles it down and forces himself to sit at the kitchen table while it sinks into his blood. He only stands up when his thoughts become fog he can blow away.

He pokes his head into his bedroom. Mama stirs at the creak of the door, eyes sliding open enough to see him. A small smile plays over her face, but as her awareness comes into focus, it feels less sincere even to Merriell’s tipsy mind. She waves him in and scoots over on the bed.

Merriell goes to her, sits on the edge of the bed beside her. He hands her a pill and her water from the nightstand, but his mind isn’t there. It’s drifting. Somewhere beyond thoughts. 

Her thin fingers come up to hold his face, thumbs gentle on his cheeks.

“You’ve been drinking.” She scolds him with her eyes. He looks away. Her thumb brushes back and forth against his skin, and when he doesn’t look up again, she tries pulling him closer. “What's wrong, Merri?”

He shakes his head. “Nothin’, Mama.” His denial doesn’t stop the crack of his voice or the shock at the base of his skull as he fights against the grains of his memories.

She clicks her tongue at him and guides him down to lie beside her, fragile limbs wrapping around and holding him close. His head rests on her shoulder and he closes his eyes as she combs her fingers through his curls. 

He tries to absorb her love, her goodness. He tries to pull in everything light in her to scare away the dark in him. He tries to not be whatever he is anymore.

It’s all unfair. Unfair that she’s so sick when she has so much good in her. Unfair that she has such a pathetic son who’s done nothing but make her life more difficult. Unfair that she has a husband who prefers the company of a bottle over that of his wife.

How she ended up with a man like Papa must have been another cruel play from god. She was gentle and smart; she had continued to teach him what she could when Papa made him leave school. And even when she’d found out about Merriell and the other men, she had protected him as best she could from his father’s outrage. She’d raised him to be gentle - because she knows a truth about it, doesn’t she? And maybe, if all of the evil in the world hadn’t been clawing for him since birth, he would have turned out better for her.

Instead, he's here. Rooted in the dark. With Arthur.

Arthur. He was excited to show him that boy. Merriell shivers at the deep settling of that notion. Arthur would never admit it, but there had been glee running through him, anticipation as they crossed that moat around the church. What response had he been expecting from Merriell? Had Merriell given Arthur the very reaction he hoped for?

He’s too ensnared now. And maybe, even just briefly, he could have humored the idea of going to the police with this...it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? 

But Reynold. 

And not just Reynold. That fucking sheriff is just as crooked as the deputy. The department of justice is the biggest misnomer Merriell’s ever heard.

Yeah, he’s in the shit alright. In it alone. For the first time in a long time, Merriell's fear is just beyond his ability to drown out with whiskey. 

His chest cracks suddenly and he's choking on a sob before he realizes it, before he can control the sound that spills out of him. 

Mama startles and moves to keep him secure, whispering into his hair, “Shhh, P’tit. Be still.” 

Why is he crying? Stop. Just fucking stop. For all of the horror of the day, has it not been worth it? To come home now and find her awake and feeling a little better? To hear her speak beyond yeses and nos? Able to hold him right now, and maybe he'd be taunted for needing her to do this, but it's the only safety he has. What’s wrong with clinging to that?

He lies there with her for a while, stifling whimpers, works at pushing the dead boy and the weight of his teeth from his mind. At some point he drops into the flitting space between sleep and wake and is jolted back to life with his heart pounding in his throat when the boy is gazing at him.

Merriell sits up. Mama’s drifted off as well. 

He goes to make her something to eat - and to take a few more slugs of whiskey.

“I dreamt about you,” She tells him in a sleep-heavy murmur when he returns with a bowl of rice. He sits in the chair beside the bed and hands her the bowl, watching to make sure she has a hold of it, and when she takes it with ease and lifts a spoonful to her mouth, his heart skips. 

“What did ya dream?”

As if she doesn’t remember speaking the words aloud, she furrows her brow and her face darkens slightly. She shakes her head. “Never mind. Tell me about your day. You helped Father Arthur?” He shrugs as the burn of tears smears his vision again. She hesitates for a moment before pushing. “What has you so upset?”

“Can we not talk about it?” He can’t look at her. He can’t let that evil seep out of him and into her. It has to be contained. They both sit in silence, her pretending to swallow rice, him pretending the pattern on the quilt is the most captivating thing he’s ever seen.

After Mama sets her bowl aside, Merriell lowers his head onto the blanket, booze heavy in his limbs and brain. He closes his eyes, willing away the remnants of memory from the day. Mama’s fingers settle in his hair, and he listens to her hum a quiet song as he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS:
> 
> There is a non explicit non-con scene in this chapter. It's in the second section (sections are separated with :::). It's been kept brief and vague - more implied - contained in a few lines of text.
> 
> There is also a dead body and violence in this chapter.


End file.
